Wait, hold on. This is the time of year when I typically check out the end-of-year awards bait movies. In fact, I was planning on following up Wonder Woman 1984 with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Why, then, is the next review for an old Jackie Chan movie?
Simple. For some reason, as soon as HBO Max became available on the Roku, the system I use, I decided to test it out with Jackie Chan’s Police Story. But, then the app crashed. And it crashed every time I tried to run the movie. It didn’t even matter which of the two Roku devices I have. The HBO Max app crashed every time I tried to watch Police Story. Then, on a lark, I tried again after Wonder Woman and the movie started just fine. I figured I better finish the movie while I could, so here we are.
The Hong Kong police is looking to bring down big time drug lord Chu Tao. To that end, the cops figure they can maybe make his new girlfriend or secretary (I wasn’t quite sure) become a witness, and there’s a large scale surveillance plan in place. One cop gets spotted, and that leads to a chase where a lone, rather acrobatic officer, Chan Ka-Kui (Jackie Chan), manages to capture the drug lord and his entourage when they tried to escape on a bus. With the witness and the arrest, it should be a slam dunk, but the young woman, Selina (Brigitte Lin), isn’t much interested in being a witness, and that’s where the troubles begin as Chan is first assigned to protect her, something she doesn’t want until she’s actually attacked…though the first attacker is one of Chan’s friends on the force. The second attack, not so much. And that’s before Chan’s jealous girlfriend gets involved.
To describe the plot to a movie like this is to somewhat miss the point. The plot, such as it is, is largely an excuse to go from one elaborate Jackie Chan slapstick fight sequence to another. Aside from one scene where Selina sets up a conversation that Chan doesn’t know is being recorded to make it sound like they had sex, it’s rather family friendly. Jackie Chan has always been as much a likable clown as he is a martial arts master. And, as writer and director, he certainly plays to his strengths. His character here is maybe not the smartest man on the force, given as he is to macho statements that seem to get him in more trouble than anything else. Heck, one of the best scenes may be when Chan, sent to an out-of-the-way station as something of a punishment, poses as multiple officers on multiple phone lines, ending with saying the worst possible thing to his long-suffering girlfriend May (Maggie Cheung).
Granted, part of that bit comes with a woman calling to report a rape, so be warned.
The final confrontation between Chan and the drug lord and his men takes place in a shopping mall, and it’s clearly the most impressive of the movie’s many martial arts set pieces. I doubt there was a single pane of glass that remained unbroken as just about everyone involved flew through one pane or the other as Chan finally reaches his breaking point. The levity is seemingly gone, but this is the end when Chan needs to bring the bad guys in, no matter what their high-priced lawyer has to say. It’s a fun ending to a fun romp, maybe not a particularly deep movie, but I don’t think anyone ever watched a Jackie Chan movie expecting the martial arts version of The Seventh Seal.
Grade: B+
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