Jack (Jackie Chan) is a famous archaeologist teaching in a major Chinese university. While working on a new project, Ashmita (Disha Patani), an Indian professor, comes into his life looking for his help to find a long-forgotten treasure that was held by the royal army but disappeared centuries ago in the Tibetan mountains. Using newly developed technology, Jack’s team manages to find a hidden ice cave that has held the treasure and the army frozen for all these years.
But before they can catalog and remove all the treasure, Randall (Sonu Sood), a treasure hunter, and his armed men steal the treasure from them and leave them to die in the frozen cave. Only Jack’s nephew, Jones (Aarif Rahman), manages to flee in the chaos while taking a large diamond for himself. Barely escaping with their lives and using ancient Yoga-breathing techniques, the team has recovered from their ordeal and find that Jones is selling the diamond in an auction in Dubai.
After travelling to the auction and having it stolen by Randall, and then again by Ashmita, Jack discovers that she is not who she says she is. The diamond is not just a diamond, but the Eye of Shiva and it can lead them to the Magadha treasure. But in order to find the treasure, Jack must figure out how to use the Eye and find a way to rescue his friends, who have been kidnapped by Randall.
Considering the film was directed by Stanley Tong, who also did Rumble In The Bronx and Supercop, I was expecting a lot more energy and exciting stunts. It may be because Chan is quite a bit older now, but the action scenes he was involved in are a lot more reserved than they usually are. He still has Kung Fu skills and a smooth fighting style, but he’s not running up walls or using ordinary objects in creative and spectacular ways. It’s his younger sidekicks that provide those moments, but they come few and far between.
Essentially, Kung Fu Yoga is one giant homage to the Indiana Jones films. There’s even a moment in the film when Jack puts the Eye of Shiva on a stick and reflects light coming from a hole in the wall to point out a spot on a map. But at least the film acknowledges what it is doing by having Jack say how much he admired the those films during the scene.
The Blu-ray is presented in 16:9 Widescreen format with a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. The video was very clear and filled with vibrant colors. The audio was had good surround sound that worked particularly well in the cave scenes, giving a full texture as the sounds bounced off the walls and echoed. There are several features, “Best of Both Worlds”, “The Dynamic Duo”, “The Making of”, and “Jackie Chan Featurette”. They are all short and with half of it in Mandarin without any subtitles it made it difficult to enjoy them. The most interesting and fun was “Bollywood Dance Featurette”, which was silly and showed that Jackie has some dance moves. “Bloopers”, which is normally my favorite part of a Jackie Chan film because it contains all the crazy stunts and how they can go horribly wrong, was no different than any other boring blooper reel of people flubbing lines.
As a Kung Fu film, Kung Fu Yoga is just an average presentation. The most interesting aspects to watch were the CGI scenes where the gang fights a group of hyenas while trying to escape the villain’s compound and then again when Jackie is involved in a car chase with a lion in the back seat. Overall, it’s entertaining to watch, the girls are beautiful, and the Bollywood ending was fun. Just don’t expect all the crazy stunts that you’ve become accustomed to seeing from this type of film.
