Jackpot! Review – Some Killer Kung Fu Would’ve Made This Epic
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Like any action fan who grew up in the 1990s, I loved watching Jackie Chan movies, including the ones he did with Owen Wilson. I honestly do not remember much about them except that I had a blast watching an Asian guy and a white guy fighting a bunch of people with some killer moves. The 2024 action-comedy “Jackpot!” is about an Asian-American woman (Awkwafina) and a big white man (John Cena) fighting hordes of people trying to kill the woman to bag her billion-dollar lottery winnings. But Awkwafina’s character is a regular person with no moves, and I instantly wished they had just tweaked the script, made her learn Kung Fu (she was a voice actor in Kung Fu Panda 4, by the way), and it would’ve given us a new action duo. Anyway…
Directed by Paul Feig and written by Rob Yescombe, “Jackpot!” is set in a dystopian California, where residents are obsessed with winning the ‘Grand Lottery’, which comes with an interesting rider: if a losing ticket holder kills the winner before sundown, they get the money and the kill is completely legal. The only catch? No guns allowed. When that’s announced in the film, I thought, “Why don’t they have a bunch of Legolas characters flying around the city?” Nobody uses bows and arrows! Pooh.
Awkwafina plays protagonist Katie Kim, an aspiring actor who is new in town and doesn’t know about the lottery. To make things worse, she accidentally registers for it and wins the jackpot, so the entire town is out to kill her, and she has no idea why! Luckily for Katie, a security services guy named Noel (John Cena) offers to protect her, for a 10% cut of her winnings. The rest of the movie is all about surviving murderous psychos out for Katie’s blood and money. The first 45 minutes of “Jackpot!” is hilariously good, with all sorts of people—actors, models, athletes, biker gangs, food truck drivers, teachers, students, grannies, heck, even the cops—trying to murder Katie because it’s absolutely legal in California to do so for the jackpot! Will she be a billionaire or dead meat at the end of the day? That’s the crux of the story.
Katie doesn’t know if she can trust big guy Noel either, but with nobody else on her side, the two sort of team up and fight against the rest of the city. And even though Awkwafina doesn’t do Kung Fu, the action choreographers do give her some amusing self-defense moves. But just imagine how much more fun it would’ve been if Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”) had played a Katie Kim that did know martial arts. Regardless, Awkwafina brings her own awkward quirkiness to Katie and manages to kick quite a few butts as she desperately hangs on for dear life throughout the runtime. Awkwafina and John Cena make a fresh, offbeat comedic duo in this ‘just for laughs’ action film.
“Jackpot!” isn’t as funny or exciting in between, especially when a new villain enters in the form of Louis Lewis (Simu Liu), another security guy who tries to steal Katie as a client from Noel. There are a bunch of clichés added in to give the script a depth it doesn’t need, like a dark history between Louis Lewis and John Cena’s Noel, which, when recalled, only slows down the movie. But after a brief slowdown, the chaos of half the town attempting to murder Katie resumes, and things get fun towards the climactic moments.
Overall, if you’re looking for a mindless action-comedy, “Jackpot!” is the right pick. It’s not memorable, but fun while it lasts. Some killer Kung Fu would’ve obviously made epic.
Rating: 3 on 5 stars. Watch “Jackpot!” on Prime Video.
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