The Shanghai Job | Artful dodger Orlando Bloom has a cunning plan

Get in. Get out. Get even.

Sporting a blond dye-job and a Cockney accent, Orlando Bloom looks more than a little out of place in Chinese-made action thriller The Shanghai Job.

He plays an expat security expert who specialises in transporting valuable art works. Trouble is, he’s in disgrace having lost a Van Gogh to an ambush in Shanghai. Can he and his trio of colourful local sidekicks achieve redemption by keeping an antique Chinese vase out of the clutches of a ruthless gang of art thieves?

There are some tolerably engaging thrills and spills here, but the script is rather ropy, revolving as it does around cunning plans by the hero that even Blackadder’s Baldrick would dismiss as half-baked.

Certificate 15. Runtime 90 mins. Director Charles Martin

Available on DVD & Digital from Signature Entertainment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qt_WVY6k0U

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.