Police Story is available for purchase, packaged with Police Story 2, on blu-ray through Shout Factory.
Not every new column must be announced with great fanfare, so for the most part, we’re just going to dig right in. But we did want to let you know that we’re always on a quest to expand and deepen our content for you readers, and we believe that a new “Movie of the Week” column will give us a great “catch all” slot each week for our writers to write about what THEY are specifically passionate about, and as we rotate through the Cinapse team and give them free rein to write about what they are discovering, we hope you’ll find some new films to see or connect with some of our writers’ particular passions. Enjoy and we hope you’ll stick around Cinapse for all that we’ve got coming down the pike.
Cinapse Movie Of The Week
Exactly what it sounds like, the movie of the week column is written up by the Cinapse team on rotation, focusing on films that are past the marketing cycle of either their theatrical release or their home video release. So maybe the movie of the week will be only a couple of years old. Or maybe it’ll be a silent film, cult classic, or forgotten gem. Cinapse is all about thoughtfully advocating film, new and old, and celebrating what we love no matter how marketable that may be. So join us as we share about what we’re discovering, and hopefully you’ll find some new films for your watch list, or some new validation that others out there love what you love too! Engage with us in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook! And now, our Cinapse Movie Of The Week…
A year or so ago, Police Story [1985] just popped into my head and wouldn’t leave. I had seen it many years ago and remembered it as one of Jackie Chan’s greatest achievements from a stunt perspective. I watched some trailers online to remind myself of its glory, but then when I went to see if I could buy it on Blu-ray, there was only some mega-expensive import available and that made me sad. Since that time, it has become available to purchase on Blu-ray as a combo pack with Police Story 2 through Shout Factory… so naturally I spent some Christmas money on it. And when my birthday rolled around and I wanted to watch a fun audience movie with some friends, I popped in Police Story.
And now that I’ve laid out a whole series of great decisions on my part, let’s dig into Police Story a little bit.
I haven’t seen every Jackie Chan film, not by a long shot. But when Rumble In The Bronx hit US theaters as an intentional effort to re-introduce North America to Jackie Chan, it worked like a charm for me. I was hooked, and read every magazine article I could find about Chan. Since I worked at a locally owned video store in my later teen years, I also had limited access to some foreign and cult films. So while I haven’t seen ALL of Jackie Chan’s film, I have seen a fair amount of his most celebrated and popular classics. And I’m willing to suggest that Police Story is Jackie’s greatest “contemporary set” film. Clearly Drunken Master II is the overall greatest, and if you know of a title that tops Drunken Master II for overall great status… please chime in and let me know so I can see it immediately.
But while Drunken Master II features enormous fight sequences that are without equal, Police Story simply has some of the most audacious and jaw-dropping stunts of any movie ever. And you have to respect that.
Chan plays… Chan. A young detective who, in typical Jackie Chan fashion, gets into lots of bumbling, Looney Tunes-style shenanigans that would result in the immediate firing of any real cop who isn’t Jackie Chan. But when the deck is totally stacked against him, Chan rises to the occasion and performs super-human feats of law enforcement kick-assery and saves his career and his girlfriend and pretty much all of Hong Kong. But the plot doesn’t really matter.
And for that matter, actually writing about Police Story is somewhat of a challenge because Chan is so physical that the entire genius of his career and body of work is something you just have to see to believe. You can’t really experience Jackie Chan in an article on the internet. And the best place to discover him is up on the big screen where he was born to dominate all of mankind with his cheeky smile, terrible haircuts, and impossible physical feats that have surely killed him at least three times and we’ve just been experiencing his clones in recent years.
But back to Police Story. The film opens with one of cinema’s most incredible action set pieces (which Michael Bay rips off in Bad Boys 2) as our heroes attempt to stake out and subsequently arrest a bad guy in the midst of a shanty town on a mountainside. All the roads have been blocked off, so our crooks decide to simply drive DIRECTLY through the shanty town. Cars careening down a mountainside, blasting through huts and markets. Jackie is in hot pursuit and once the jaw-dropping village destruction is past, a foot-vs-double-decker-bus chase ensues where Jackie is swinging off the sides of a speeding bus and everything in the world is right and good because of just how perfect of a cinema moment this all is.
If there is any criticism to be leveled at the film, it is that in between this shot across the bow opening, a great fist fight towards the middle, and the climactic sequence I’ll get to in a moment, you could probably cut down Police Story by a good 10 minutes and it’d be a much leaner and meaner product. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing Jackie step in some cow poop and then BREAKDANCE in order to get it off his shoe… complete with a little old school hip hop beat thrown into the mix. But there are really long sequences of physical comedy and domestic squabbles with his girlfriend that, while signature Jackie, get a little indulgent. I wouldn’t want to lose any of these sequences since they are borne out of Jackie’s roots in the Chinese opera and his love of American classics like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. But here in 2014 I would probably suggest editing all of the gags a little bit tighter, so they have more punch and don’t linger past their welcome. At 100 minutes, you just get the sense that a 90 minute Police Story would hold up even better today.
But I promised to get around to the climax of the movie. A fight scene taking place all over a mall that features simply some of the greatest stunts and fights in all of action cinema. Jackie is basically on a rampage. The bad guy has eluded him through slippery lawyers and political machinations and nothing will stop Jackie at this point… the law be damned. As an army of villains are attempting to stop him, fight after fight takes place until no single pane of glass remains intact in this entire mall. Literally dozens of stunt people will go crashing through breakaway glass in the most dramatic slow motion imaginable. One iconic shot very clearly shows Jackie Chan’s face being slammed right through a window. You’ll laugh, you’ll pump your fist, you’ll shriek in amazement. So much glass is broken by so many human body parts, the only appropriate response is abject joy.
But then there are the jumps and falls. At one point Jackie jumps over a side railing some 15 to 20 feet onto a moving escalator, and that isn’t even the 3rd best stunt in the sequence. The granddaddy stunt of this whole film involves Chan (no stunt doubles, mind you) leaping from probably a 4th or 5th story hand railing inside of this mall, grabbing onto a pole/chandelier combo affixed with hundreds of lights, sliding down the pole with little electrical explosions happening all around him, falling a full story onto the ground, then getting up and CONTINUING TO FIGHT DUDES WITHOUT A CUT. That’s right. In maybe the least responsible thing ever done in a movie, Chan (with no discernable air bag or plan B) jumps into open space, grabs a pole filled with live electricity, slides down it, and after falling to the ground at the bottom of the pole, he leaps up and engages in a fist fight without a camera cut.
In the now-classic montage of behind the scenes footage that always accompanies the closing credits of Chan’s films, you see the few seconds AFTER the cameras cut from this incredible sequence, and Jackie’s arms fly into the air. You can taste the adrenaline that must be coursing through his veins. The sequence is action cinema gold, performed by perhaps the greatest international screen legend of all time, and that behind the scenes moment of triumph is riveting.
If you’ve never seen Police Story and count yourself as a Jackie Chan fan, I highly recommend seeking out this all time great. I’ve now watched Police Story 2 as well, which isn’t anywhere near as iconic, but still a ton of fun. And the theme song to these films has been LOCKED in my brain with no hope of escape. On top of all of that, I should note that Chan directed both films and sang their catchy theme song. His talent is boundless.
And in a confusing bit of continuity, the films known as Police Story 3 and 4 in China were actually brought to America as Super Cop [1992] and First Strike [1996], respectively. So many of you have probably seen Police Story 3 and 4 without knowing it. (I count myself in that group as I saw both of those films theatrically but haven’t revisited them since). And there’s even a couple more titles in the series that are “grittier” reboots which I must now see. New Police Story [2004], and Police Story 2013.
One of Jackie Chan’s most enduring brands and one of international cinema’s most successful action franchises, we’d all be better off with a little bit more Police Story in our lives.
And I’m Out.