Police Story
A film review by Chris Casino
* - Poor ** - Fair *** - Good **** - Excellent
***1/2 out of ****
Crew: Produced by Raymond Chow, Written by Jackie Chan and Edward Tang, Directed by Jackie Chan
Cast: Jackie Chan (Officer Jackie Chan), Bridgette Lin (Selena Fong), Maggie Cheung (May), Ken Tong (Inspector Bill Wong), Chu Yeun (Tom Ku)
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Jackie Chan. He makes his fight scenes realistic in that he gets hurt all the time (unlike American action stars) and he risks his life for his audience. I can't ask any more from my action heroes than that. Except for one thing:
They should keep making movies like this.
After returning to Hong Kong after shooting the amateurish Dirty Harry wannabe movie The Protector for James Glickenhaus (And where's he now? HELLO!) and putting the finishing touches on his version, Jackie Chan decided he wanted to do a cop movie his way and cooked up one with his frequent screenwriter Edward Tang, and, as expected of Jackie, it's a doozy!
The plot concerns Officer Kevin Chan (renamed Jackie in the dubbed-for-US version I saw) who is framed for the murder of a fellow officer trying to protect a witness. He spends the rest of the movie running from Tom Ku's mobsters, policemen, and, in a hilarious subplot, his jealous girlfriend May.
Not much of a plot, I realize, and plots are usually irrelevant in a Jackie Chan movie. You have so much fun watching the kung fu stunts and action mixed with the Chaplin-esque comedy, you don't mind that there's no story around what's going on. Here is no exception.
However, I do realize I complained particularly in my review of The Protector of the film's lack of a plot. That in itself isn't really a problem. The fact that James Glickenhaus would not allow Chan to be himself *was*. By turning him into a Dirty Harry cop, he ruins the appeal of Jackie in the first place. In an interview years afterward, Glickenhaus said he did not regret his decision (he obviously never saw the movie) and said he thought people in the States wouldn't accept his Asian style. Well, James, after Rush Hour and Rumble in the Bronx's successes here, I'll bet you're eating your words (not to mention free cheese from the government) now, aren't you?
Here, Jackie had total control of this movie. That is good because he knows how to film an action movie. James Glickenhaus does not. Don't believe me? Rent The Protector and Police Story and compare them side by side, then talk to me again.
As I said in my review of the latter film, if Golden Harvest had hired John Woo to direct and juice up Glickenhaus' script, it might have been halfway decent. In the Glickenhaus attempt its' only saving graces were Jackie and one or two decent fights and stunts. This isn't the case here. Jackie has total control and his screenwriter, Edward Tang, totally knows how to write a real Jackie Chan movie.
I also said in my review of the Protector that they should've let Jackie be himself in it because Americans would go wild over a kung fu comedian. In that case, maybe this film should've been distributed to the U.S. when it was made like Rumble in the Bronx later was. Maybe then Americans would've realized what a novelty he was and he wouldn't have had to've been soured on Hollywood by The Protector.
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