• 警察故事 (Police Story)

6/9/26 (Tues)

Jackie Chan conceived, co-wrote and directed this 1985 film after his unhappy experience with The Protector, the misconceived vehicle that was supposed to have been his US breakthrough. The producers in that film were trying to fit him into typical US action star mode, clearly not understanding his unique brand of choreographed comedy action. So he took matters into his own hand – to spectacular results.

Chan (his name in the film as well) is a policeman entrusted with breaking down a criminal drug-running gang. All the usual tropes are there – he messes up his first assignment, gets involved with a female gang member, is betrayed by a fellow cop, and so forth – and there are numerous comic segments, some pretty lame (did we really need the sequence where Chan is on four phone lines at once?), that help break up the action. At one point, Chan is being pursued by both the mafia (who want to kill him) and the police (who want to arrest him for murder). Needless to say, he triumphs over both. There’s a very satisfying ending when the police, having taken the mafia boss in custody, tell Chan to follow the law and not let his frustrations out on the guy. Chan’s fury at the way the legal system has played against him prompts him to smash the guy anyway. The arrested murderer threatens to sue, but the police chief pretends not to have seen, allowing justice to take precedence over the law. That was my favorite moment.

But the story was in any case only a framework on which to hang some of the most breathtaking kung fu fight scenes ever filmed. The film starts at full throttle with a jaw-dropping car chase that plows right through a hillside favela, ending with Chan hanging by an umbrella from a moving bus. Subsequent increasingly wacky fight scenes are capped by an astounding finale in a department store where Chan – who gets as good as he gives, including having his face knocked through a glass case – slides down electrical lighting fixtures to reach the bottom floor, literally giving off sparks along the way. I can’t even begin to go into the wild nature of the fights, but all were grounded in kicks, punches and eye-watering stunts rather than John Woo-style guns and explosives. It’s a cartoon world but all done by actual people – no CGI here – and we can feel every blow. This is not Bruce Lee style, where the fighter just gets the job done, but a very theatrical manner staged within an inch of its life. I was blown away by its sheer inventiveness. That came with significant injuries to its cast, especially Chan (the outtakes show him on a stretcher), but the results were sheer awesomeness.

The film was a big hit in Asia and turned Chan from star to superstar, spawning a number of sequels. It wasn’t as well received in the West, where Chan’s outlandish comic kung fu genre wasn’t as well established, but its reputation has grown in the years since – it’s cited as one of the best action films of all time, which is certainly true in my limited experience. Strongly recommended.