Police Story

After coming to America and making the horrid The Protector, Chan came back to Hong Kong with the idea to make more modern martial arts/action movies than what he had been doing. Police Story would become a huge success and the prototype for Chan's films for nearly a decade afterwards. Not only that, many of the movie's high-powered action sequences (most notably the "mall brawl" at the end) would be used or outright copied in many other films, both in the US and HK. Even though it is almost 15 years old, Police Story still holds up very well today. It starts out with a sequence where a whole hillside village is literally demolished and then goes into one of the most exciting chase sequences ever filmed, where Chan gets onto a moving bus using only the handle of an umbrella. Besides a couple of slow bits in the middle (mostly dealing with the romantic subplots), the movie rarely slows down long enough for the viewer to catch their breath. One of Chan's all-time best (and his personal favorite movie), Police Story should not be missed by any action fan. Be aware that many US video copies have very shoddy quality; the best one (at least in terms of picture/sound quality) is the remastered Dimension version.

As a side note, this was also one of the first $$ID=Jackie Chan$$ films to feature a "blooper reel" at the end -- an element which Chan got from The Cannonball Run.

Review Courtesy of Neil