General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Ride On (龙马精神)

Ride On (龙马精神) is a 2023 Chinese action comedy drama film written and directed by Larry Yang (杨子), starring Jackie Chan as an aging stuntman whose fight to keep his beloved stunt horse goes viral and forces a reckoning with his estranged daughter and his own fading career. It was released in mainland China on April 7, 2023, runs 126 minutes, and is performed in Mandarin.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Chinese title / English title	龙马精神 / Ride On²
Director and writer	Larry Yang (杨子)¹
Lead cast	Jackie Chan (Lao Luo / Luo Zhilong), Liu Haocun (Xiaobao), Guo Qilin (Naihua), with Wu Jing, Yu Ailei, Joey Yung, Yu Rongguang, and Andy On²^•³
Release	Mainland China April 7, 2023; world premiere March 11, 2023; DVD October 24, 2023¹^•⁴^•⁵
Runtime and language	126 minutes, Mandarin¹
Reception	Rotten Tomatoes 66% from 32 critics, 76% audience score; Metacritic Metascore 50; IMDb 6.3; Douban 5.3⁵^•⁶^•⁷^•⁸
Box office	$36,258,730 worldwide; $64.8K gross in the United States⁴^•⁵

Spoilers

Plot

Lao Luo (Jackie Chan) is a washed-up stuntman living on a studio lot with Red Hare (赤兔, Chitu), the horse he raised and trained, earning a living from tourist photos and mascot appearances for small businesses.⁹^•¹⁰ When two debt collectors attempt to seize the horse, video of the confrontation and the pair's acrobatic escape spreads on social media, and the humiliated collectors return for revenge.⁵ The viral fame brings Luo an offer of stunt work with Red Hare, but it also draws him into a legal battle over the horse's ownership.⁹

To fight the case, Luo turns to his estranged daughter Xiaobao (Liu Haocun), a law student, who enlists her newly qualified lawyer boyfriend Naihua (Guo Qilin); the film follows the reconciliation of the strained father-daughter relationship alongside the custody fight.⁹^•¹¹ Xiaobao also tries to stop Luo from pushing Red Hare into dangerous stunt training, which he continues in secret.⁸

Themes and tribute to stunt performers

The film is dedicated to "all the kung fu stuntmen who contributed to 100 years of Chinese film history" and centers on the Longhu Wushi (龙虎武师), the Hong Kong film industry's specialist stunt workers who performed doubles, stunts, and bit parts, often at real risk.¹²^•¹³ Critics read the film as a tribute to that profession and to Chan's own career: the backstory riffs on the star's life, a stuntman who refuses to retire, with constant callbacks to his earlier work.¹¹^•⁶

Filming coincided with the 60th anniversary of Chan's screen career, and director Yang, a longtime Chan fan, embedded numerous Easter eggs in costumes, action, and dialogue recalling Chan's classic roles.³ In the film, Luo keeps a DVD of clips and outtakes from Chan's greatest work in the 1980s and 1990s, shown whenever someone needs reminding of who he was.¹⁰ One line aimed at Luo, "your era has passed," prompted Chan to observe that it is simply true: films are no longer made by risking performers' lives but by protecting them.¹³

Production

Chan, then 68, performed the action scenes himself despite a leg injury, postponing surgery and joining the production using up twenty days of block injections (pain-blocking shots) that would normally have covered half a year.³^•¹³ The production emphasized real falls and real fights, and the crew maintained written rules for working with the horse on set; Chan initially worried about cooperating with the animal, grooming, feeding, and resting alongside Red Hare to build rapport.³

Production companies included Alibaba Pictures, Beijing Hairun Pictures, HG Entertainment, China Film Co., and Fosun Pictures, with Well Go USA Entertainment handling North American distribution.⁵^•¹⁴

Release and box office

The film premiered on March 11, 2023, and opened in mainland China on April 7, 2023, followed by releases in the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Russia, and other territories through 2023 and into 2024 (Japan, May 31, 2024).⁴ It grossed $36,258,730 worldwide, of which $64.8K came from the limited United States theatrical run; it was released on DVD and streaming on October 24, 2023.⁴^•⁵

Reception

Critical response was mixed. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 66% Tomatometer from 32 reviews, with a warmer 76% audience score; Metacritic assigned a Metascore of 50, based on 7 critic reviews.⁵^•⁶ Douban users rated it 5.3 out of 10, and IMDb users 6.3.⁸^•⁷

Praise and criticism. Reviewers singled out the horse's expressive performance, the well-shot fight choreography, and Chan's emotional range; Bob Strauss of the San Francisco Chronicle called it "a fine film about a man, his daughter and the horse they both love," and a loving if ambivalent homage to the heyday of martial arts cinema.⁵^•⁶ Others found the melodrama heavy-handed: Simon Abrams of RogerEbert.com called it "a stingy elegy to a bygone era of filmmaking and an unbelievable melodrama," and The New York Times's Brandon Yu wrote that its attempts at emotion often felt like parody.⁶ The Guardian's Phil Hoad noted that the 68-year-old Chan still dismounts "like a limber teenager" but that the fights largely retread familiar ground.⁶ Starburst judged the film a harmless curiosity whose fan-service callbacks feel misplaced, and noted that most of Chan's movements in the fight scenes were performed by a stuntman.¹¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Action comedies › Action comedies, 2020s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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