aka Ging Chat Goo Si, aka Police Force

• Directed by Jackie Chan
• Written by Edward Tang
• Starring
  • Jackie Chan
  • Maggie Cheung
  • Brigitte Lin
  • Bill Tung
• Produced by Raymond Chow

By 1985, Jackie Chan was already a mega-star in Hong Kong, having carved a niche for himself, first for his goofy physical humor (starting with Drunken Master in 1979) and then for his stunt-filled action style (established with Project A in 1983). By the time Chan directed himself in Police Story, he had already developed a reputation for designing increasingly-dangerous stunts. He also had a reputation for getting a lot of stuntmen hurt.

At least in the dubbed U.S. version, Jackie Chan plays a police sergeant named Jackie Chan, and the plot, in its broad outlines, goes like this:

Chan and his fellow officers salvage a raid gone bad by capturing Mr. Ku, a slippery drug dealer. In order to get his secretary, Selina Fong (the incredibly beautiful Brigitte Lin), to spill the beans, the police release her alone without bail, then assign Chan to protect her as a witness for the prosecution. Naturally, Ku’s organization doesn’t sit still with a possible weak link walking around — while Chan’s girlfriend May (Maggie Cheung, in her round-faced and girl-next-doorish phase), suspects that this new woman is actually Chan’s secret paramour. Dirty cops, double crosses, etc., abound, with the upshot being that Chan is framed for the murder of another cop, who was in Ku’s employ. Everything finally boils down to a whirlwind fight in a shopping center, as Selina tries to keep pilfered info from Ku’s computer out of the goons’ hands.

All right, that’s the plot. But nobody goes to see Jackie Chan movies for the plot. Since leaving the standard historical martial arts genre behind, Jackie has made props a normal part of his fights, so in this movie he demonstrates (with apologies to Joe Bob Briggs) Umbrella Fu, car Fu, Moped Fu, Parking Fu, Forklift Fu, Escalator Fu, Trellis Fu, Dry Cleaner Fu, Shopping Cart Fu, and Christmas Light Fu. Here are the main action scenes:

#1: In the initial raid, after a rather uncompelling firefight, the bad guys try to escape by driving their car directly through a shantytown on the side of a hill. Jackie pursues, both cars are ditched at the bottom, the bad guys hijack a bus, Jackie clings to the outside with the handle of an umbrella for about five minutes, and eventually outraces the bus (thanks to shortcuts) and uses a commandeered vehicle to block the road and play chicken.

#2: With Selina under Jackie’s protection, the cops then try to scare her by staging an attack on her life, with Jackie stepping in to “protect” her. Unfortunately, she clubs the attacker over the head with a vase and knocks him out, so to maintain the threat, Jackie has to manipulate the unfortunate boob while “grappling” with him. This is more of a physical comedy thing than straight action, but it’s pure Chan.

#3: The real bad guys strike, and Jackie has to fight them off while jumping in and out of two cars (getting the cars demolished in the process.)

#4: Selina’s gotten herself captured by Ku, and Jackie has to go get her. This one’s much more a straight fight, notable mainly for the sheer amount of damage done to people and furniture. (Double-thickness candy glass was used all through the movie to give that look of extra realism — and it works. And it looks like it hurts.)

#5: Finally, Jackie squares off against a billion goons in the shopping center. In the process, he goes though plate after plate of candy glass (falling, being thrown, riding a motorcycle, etc.), leaps full stories onto movie escalators, and does all of the acrobatics off other people’s bodies that you would expect. It culminates with a slide down a 100-foot pole, strung with Christmas lights, which reportedly took all the skin off Jackie’s palms.

It’s all good fun, and classic Chan, although some elements probably don’t sit as well with U.S. audiences as the homegrown fans. The mood of the story changes too often, from slapstick most of the time to deadly serious in the end (despite the over-the-top stunts). The courtroom scenes will also seem odd to American viewers, and not just because of the funny wigs that the judge and lawyers wear; judges in Hong Kong are actually reluctant to grant postponements and recesses? And naturally, we gweilos have the dubbing to contend with. (At least the American version was rescored by J. Peter Robinson; I’ve heard a few mid-’80s Hong Kong soundtracks, and they usually add little more to the movie than further cause to giggle.)

As usual, the credits are shown with the outtakes and bloopers. Somehow, I’ve never seen so much footage of injured stunt men. No wonder that, by this time period, Jackie was having trouble finding stunt performers willing to work with him; these stunts look like they were designed to hurt, even when done correctly. You just plain don’t see that in Shanghai Noon.

I’m still looking for the perfect Jackie Chan movie, and I don’t think this was it, but it’s certainly a prime example of what’s enjoyable in his body of work.

Some Notable Totables:

(compiled from the 92-minute New Line release)

• body count: 5
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 6
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• pies to the face: 3
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0