Police Story
Review
Format: VCD
Stars: Jackie Chan, Fong Hak On, Mars, Tai Po, others

Being a small time fan of Jackie Chan, I've seen almost all of his movies after the Lo Wei era (and I'm not just talking about his american released movies like most people claim). Jackie's been the cop in a lot of movies; Supercop, Supercop 2 (cameo role), Police Story 1, Police Story 2, First Strike, Project A, Project A2, Winners and Sinners, Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars, My Lucky Stars, Crime Story, Rush Hour, and Heart of Dragon. Some of these are good, while others are just 'cop movies', with little substance besides a drug bust and the sort. But Police Story, as you'll hear in many many other places, is probably the movie where Jackie plays the cop role to his full potential, not to mention that it's a great movie to start with.

The story really doesn't revolve around Chu's (Ku in the American release) drug dealings, but instead Ka Kui's (Jackie) implication in police matters. To me, this is another Righting Wrongs, in an entirely different flavor. A little less action (very slightly less action), yet a more involved story line. I feel sorry for the people who think they've seen the great AMERICAN RELEASED AND DUBBED version of Police Story, because it leaves a LOT out. Sure, no action is gone, but what I've learned is that a martial arts movie is made with the plot, and that's what the American release leaves out, as they did with Project A and Supercop and First Strike and.... This one's gripping and brings the viewers closer to Ka Kui's persuit of justice, just like Biao's in Righting Wrongs.

Then again, perhaps the action isn't much lacking compared to Righting Wrongs. Righting Wrongs' show was stolen by Biao, while no one else really showed off how good they were. They only tried (Rothrock). But in this, everyone has a part to show off, from guys falling 20 feet down in between esclelators to spinning into glass display cases after being swept off their feet. Jackie isn't the only star here, which makes it very interesting. Jackie stunt team plays a large part, Mars being in it as well as Fong Hak On, who plays one of Chu's bodyguards and does a very impressive, although short, finale with Jackie.

To start with, 3 cars drive THROUGH a makeshift hillside town, where all the buildings are made out of sheet metal and scaffoldings make fine structures. All hell breaks loose. As you're watching it, you'll see people falling off buildings, and you'll see them land too which helps out quite a bit, and you'll see the cars tumble, and then you'll see Jackie driving a little Colt (I think) right into an embankment on the other side of the road, unbuckle, and run out. Pretty funny when you get to see the guy do this stuff which won't be allowed in America. He then performs some other insane maneuvers, like hanging onto the side of a bus with an umbrella, the kind of thing you'd see in a cartoon and say "yea right", and then do a lateral L movement to keep from hitting oncoming cars, or run down a slope which probably goes down more than a 50 degree angle, and he keeps his feet moving the whole time. Finally, when he stops the bus, it comes to a screeching halt and 2 men do dive rolls, out of the windows, onto the pavement from the top story of the bus, which is probably a good 10 or 11 feet up in the air. These are the kinds of things that are missing from the modern Jackie movies. They won't allow Jackie to do these things anymore, and he might not be able to either. That's sad, because here he is in his prime, doing things more insane than anyone ever did in America since Buster Keaton.



There's also a court hearing where Jackie is questioned by a lawyer, a very clever and good defense one at that. Jackie had obviously caught Chu, but this guy made it clear that he in fact caught a business man who tried to run off, having just gotten on the bus. Plus, no witnesses were to be found. But I wonder now, what about the bus driver, who was held at gunpoint? He would have made a fine witness. Oh well, I didn't think of it while watching.

But more action abounds. Jackie is driving along and hits a carriage with a plastic baby in it, to soon be ganged up on by Chu's henchmen. At the beginning of this scene, Jackie basically gets hit by a car and rolls up onto the windshield, and flies off. The way he made it look, I thought that most people would die from this. He does a few other things too, like kicking through the car window to get to an opponent on the other side, and also throwing another guy against an open door, tearing it off.



Then there's the scene inside Chu's place. Jackie makes an easy pummel over the gate by bringing his entire body to one side, straightlegged. When he gets inside, he throws people around all over the place. One of them goes out the window, lands on his upper back on a wire kind of balcony, rolls off onto the ground, painfully, from about 10 feet up. Jackie kicks another one up, down into the middle of a glass table, he breaks through and is then sitting in the frame. Impressive stunt work on Jackie's stunt team's behalf.



The final scene is where Jackie really makes an appearance. There are a few fights here, the longest ones in the movie, and people go through glass, over railings, between escelators (like I said), through tables, through display cases, repeatedly, in good fashion. The first big fall taken is by Jackie himself, where he goes through a wooden railing, down, through a wooden roof, hitting the ground, hard, from maybe 16 feet up. I heard this causes him problems later on. It's very impressive, all in one take, and he gets right up and runs off afterwords. He then takes on some men who have baseball bats, and Jackie uses a clothes rack to parry and block. In the American Narrow Screen version, you don't get to see everything, but when Jackie tosses one of the guys into a staircase-display case and he breaks through, you can't see what's happening on the left, even though it's not much since it's all in slow mo. But nonetheless, you get more with widescreen. Jackie ends up taking one guy, holding his legs, so that the guy's body is extended horizontally outward, and he rotates his torso through a corner display case (this is inside a shopping mall in case you couldn't tell), in one side, out the other. Fong Hack On comes up to Jackie and, using a briefcase, hits the side of Jackie's head and he goes right into some glass. Painful. Then, as he's fending off about 4 guys while on the floor, they all perform some more amazing acts. This is the only time I saw any special effects of any kind. Jackie's kicking punching someone, and a leg flies up on the opposite side of him which couldn't possibly be his. But it's still cool, and it's funny, imagining Jackie doing that. At one point he's on the ground, and someone ends up straddling him, so Jackie picks him up, spins him, and the man hits the ground after doing maybe 2 and a half spins in the air. This is done again, only Jackie twists the guy by putting both of his legs underneath the other guy's, spinning, and he does maybe a triple HK spin into the side of a display case. Jackie continues. Fong Hak On comes up, Jackie does a jumping front kick on his chest, and then runs up throwing a flurry of punches which look amazingly good and well placed. They're all blocked, so the pace isn't slowed at all. At the end of it, Jackie places a low punch, blocked, high punch, blocked, and immediately goes low again and hits him hard. Running after Fong Hak On, he trips, rolls over Hak On's body, and hits a rack full of glass frames and crap, one of which goes straight down and almost hits him. You could see that this wasn't planned, and Jackie even moved his head in the wrong way, almost getting creamed by it. Hak On then pulls the entire rack down on top of Jackie, and everything breaks. What damage! Hak On grabs Jackie's witness, pulls her over his shoulder, through a table lined with more department store junk. Jackie gets up, headbutts Hak On twice, picks him up over his head, and tosses him into another display case, this time straight down through it. Hak On runs off, Jackie follows and seeing that Hak On is already making his way down the escelator (this is on the second story), he pummels the railing from over 12 feet above the escelator and lands on the stairs, and jumps over to the other one to catch Hak On. Hak On tosses the briefcase over the railing, which Jackie is after because it's crucial evidence, and Chu's about to retrieve it, so Jackie performs one of his most insane stunts in his career: He slides down a metal pole from way way way up, rips through lines of electric light strands repeatedly, through another wooden roof, to the floor. I heard he walked away with third degree burns on his hands after this. Our man succeeds.



Police Story is action packed, contradictory to what I said before. And it's serious too. This is about an officer who wants to put a criminal away once and for all and is fed up with the force's way of harboring to murderers and drug dealers instead of the innocent. Like I said, this is another Righting Wrongs, only this time Jackie is the hero. And trust me, when you see this, you'll think Jackie really is a hero afterwords. The guy is amazing, and I've never seen his potential used to such extremes in American movies. I only wish Project A had been released in theatres now.



10/10. Keep in mind that I knew when I bought this movie that it was 10 material. I just had to confirm it.

UPDATE 10/9 - Rating System Change

5/5 - Jackie's best cop movie.

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