After Chon Wang (Chan) learns that his father, the keeper of the Imperial Seal, has been murdered and the seal stolen, he goes to New York City to look up his old pal Roy O'Bannon, who, in between day shifts as a waiter and night shifts as a gigolo, has been secretly ghost-writing dime novels that mythologize his western exploits. Wang's sister, and martial arts equal, Chon Lin (Fann Wong) had tried in vain to save her father and pledged to recover the symbol of the emperor's authority—a search that leads her to the British Lord Rathbone (Aidan Gillen) and an unwelcome stay in a Scotland Yard jail cell. Naturally, Wang and O'Bannon go to London to spring her, and along the way to recovering the seal they encounter a plethora of real people, including Jack the Ripper, not-yet-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and an annoyingly Dickensian version of a young Charlie Chaplin. Wang meets his near-match fighting Rathbone's henchman and would-be emperor of China, Wu Yip (played by real-life martial arts expert Donnie Yen). And, as the title prematurely reveals, the duo also manages to do something worthy of their being knighted by movie's end. It's not a bad movie, mind you, but if Shanghai Noon is a solid three-star film, this one falls short by a full point—if for no other reason than it's being contrived, predictable, and more intrusive than the Watergate break-in.

Both the outtakes at movie's end and the behind-the-scenes features are almost refreshingly honest, by comparison. There's a "Fight Manual" featuring filming footage and interviews with Dobkins and Chan that are quite good, and some 30 minutes of entertaining deleted scenes—one with the pair in knights' armor and an expanded scene inside Madam Toussad's Wax Museum. After those, though, the extras slide too. A short, silent-film-style "Action Overload" music video seems fairly pointless, and of the two full-length commentaries only Dobkin's is worthwhile. The second, featuring writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, gets grating in a hurry as this pair guffaws much of the way through their below-average remarks. Thankfully, the sound (5.1 Dolby Digital Surround) and picture quality (2.35:1 aspect ratio, enhanced so that it's slightly larger) are excellent. In addition to the English, there's a French language track and Spanish subtitles.

An homage is wonderful if it's not overdone, but unfortunately that's not the case in Shanghai Knights. In the first film, it was amusing that O'Bannon kept pronouncing Chon Wang's name "John Wayne" and muttering what a terrible name that was for a cowboy. But one inside Hollywood joke goes a long way. Here, we get more of the John Wayne bit, plus an appearance by Charlie Chaplin as Oliver!, Chan doing his umbrella martial arts dance a la Singin' in the Rain (complete with musical background), and gags about Sherlock Holmes, Stonehenge, and a number of other routines.

In his commentary, Dobkin cites the sountrack from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as an inspiration, and certainly A Knight's Tale proved recently that it's possible to have a modern soundtrack for a period movie if the music stays in the background and is appropriate to the action. Here, the tone changes radically with not just the umbrella routine but other scenes as well, including a chase where Wang and O'Bannon careen to the music of The Who's "Magic Bus." Bottom line: Shanghai Noon was surprising and quirky; Shanghai Knights is predictable, with the plot feeling like a sequence of set-ups for gags and overly long martial arts routines. There are some laughs and thrills, sure, but mostly it's more hokey than quirky.