Police Story

Jingcha gushi; action / crime, Hong Kong, 1985; D: Jackie Chan, S: Jackie Chan, Brigitte Lin, Charlie Cho, Maggie Cheung, Yuen Chor




In a spectacular attempt, a police raid goes wrong and the suspected criminal Chu flees, but police officer Kevin Chan Ka-Kui is able to stop a bus with Chu and his three associates and arrest them all. Secretary Selina, who was Chu's lover, is now the main witness, so Ka-Kui gets the assignment to watch over her for the upcoming trial against Chu. In her house, she gets attacked by a fake killer, one of Ka-Kui's police friends, so that Ka-Kui can have an excuse to protect her, a measure Selina stubbornly avoided, thinking that Chu would never hurt her, so Ka-Kui brings her to his apartment, which causes his jealous girlfriend, May, to leave him. Chu gets released thanks to a good lawyer and immediately frames Ka-Kui with the murder of a police officer chief. Now the police is after Ka-Kui, but he proves his innocence and arrests Chu in a mall.

Jackie Chan, the master of impossible martial-arts stunts from Hong Kong movies, decided to direct "Police Story" himself, his 5th directorial achievement, in order to present himself in a more serious edition, even adding some bitter themes of corruption and tough life of police officers. Implicitly, the dark-serious approach is not quite his style, the (over)acting of some actors is bothersome and the story is not always that well written—the critics rightfully pointed out at two very illogical sequences: the one with the fake assailant with a mask who attacks Selina with a knife in her home, in secret collusion with Ka-Kui, which was badly directed and seems like a clumsy spoof of "Halloween"; and the one where Ka-Kui knows he is framed for murder of a police officer, but goes to the police station anyway, only to hear from his superior that they have to open up an investigation against him, so Ka-Kui makes a terrible blunder by taking the said officer hostage in order to get out of the station, which was pointless to begin with—yet despite only four action sequences, "Police Story" as a whole is not so dramatically different from his opus, whereas he manages to insert a few humorous scenes here and there, like the spectacular one where the car is speeding through plastic houses in a slum, downhill, or when the hero is pretending to have a phone conversation with May, his girlfriend, but she is right behind him. Also, the mall stunt scene, shown three times, where Chan slides down a long pole 'fireman style', breaking through hundred small light bulbs wrapped around it and causing them to explode through his arms, is a legend and still causes bewilderment over how in the World he managed to survive that. Despite all the flaws, the film still contains that uncapturable spirit of audacity and untramelled creativity of Hong Kong cinema which reached its zenith in the 80s, demonstrating how they are willing to do extraordinary things to stand out from the "ordinary" cinema of the world, which instills respect.

Grade:+++