POLICE STORY Is The Best Story

From January 17 through January 21, Neon Splatter is celebrating all things Jackie Chan. His movies, his many other projects, and his impact on film as well as film lovers. This is #JackieChanuary.

Jackie Chan’s work is loved by a lot of people for a lot of reasons. Representation for some, physical comedy for others, and a callback to a time when some actors did their own stunts and lived to tell the tale. When I was growing up, my first introduction to Jackie Chan was the animated TV show Jackie Chan Adventures and I became enthralled with the action-packed scenes before me. As I got older, I saw plenty of American movies starring Chan, but I never truly went back and watched his international films. Starting with POLICE STORY made sense to me, as I continuously saw it pop up in sites’ top action films of all time and top Jackie Chan films. The story that gave me the final kick I needed was a 2021 TimeOut article written by Joshua Rothkopf and Phil de Semlyen (in coordination with critics, actors, stunt coordinators, etc) of their definitive 101 Best Action Movies Ever Made which placed POLICE STORY at number four.

POLICE STORY, released to theaters internationally on December 14, 1985, featured a young Jackie Chan alongside a slew of popular actors in Hong Kong cinema including Brigitte Lin, Chor Yeun, and Maggie Cheung. The film was directed by, starred, and co-written (alongside Edward Tang) by Jackie Chan. According to Chan himself in his 1998 autobiography, I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action, POLICE STORY is his personal favorite from his filmography mainly due to the stunts and fights. I have to agree as this is also my favorite of his movies (that I’ve seen) and it’s threatening LETHAL WEAPON’s spot in my favorite action films.

The movie leans heavily into its stunts and is known for its action, but the comedy is top-tier, too! I never expected to see multiple pie-in-the-face moments (three times by my count) and didn’t realize how much I needed to see Jackie Chan moonwalk and bust dance moves to get animal poop off of his shoe.

In this movie, Chan can best be described as a Charlie Chaplin-Clint Eastwood-Steve McQueen fusion with the authentic grit American films sometimes lack.

The longer build-up of this article is to say although the plot seems straightforward, there’s so much more to this movie which is why its influence is felt throughout action and comedy films to this day. POLICE STORY tells the story of Inspector Chan Ka-Kui (played by Chan) as he works to protect Salina (played by Brigitte Lin) from her criminal boss Chu Tao (played by Chor Yeun) and his gang of underlings. As a precursor to Chan’s later action-comedy works, POLICE STORY showed off some of the better stunts I’ve seen from Chan and his Jackie Chan Stunt Team.

At the beginning of the film, a gang bust goes awry with Ka-Kui and his fellow officers in Mitsubishi cars literally plowing through a shanty village in a jaw-dropping sequence. Within the same sequence, Ka-Kui chases a double-decker bus on foot and proceeds to hang off the side of the bus by an umbrella while it’s swaying through the street. Due to Chan historically doing most of his own stunts, injuries are a given throughout his illustrious career but I’d point to a particular stunt in POLICE STORY as one that he would call one of the scariest and simultaneously one of the best executed.

During the final act of the film, Chan’s character, Ka-Kui is chasing Chu Tao and his men through a shopping mall in a grueling battle royale when the action finds itself several floors below him. Instead of running back down an escalator, Ka-Kui jumps onto a light-wrapped pole and slides down to the movie’s finale. During the filming of this particular stunt, Chan reportedly got second-degree burns on his palms and had to land on “a small prop car with a million candies” (00:46-00:56). Chan also sustained two fractured spinal vertebrae and a dislocated pelvis during production. The fascinating thing about Jackie Chan and his Superman-like stunt work is how he had the ability to persevere through injuries: after burning his palms in his brightly lit pole slide, he had a beer and went on to film scenes for HEART OF DRAGON the same day.

I love this film wholeheartedly.

While Jackie Chan would go on to become better known in the United States for movies like THE KARATE KID, SHANGHAI NOON, and RUSH HOUR, fans of action, comedy, and the fusion of the two should seriously consider going back to his earlier films and seeing his best work, POLICE STORY. There are shootouts, hand-to-hand combat sequences, and plenty of falls, and, all the while, Chan and his stunt team persist without pulling punches.

The result of their hard work is what gives this film a realism that’s missing from Chan’s American films.

I understand why Jackie Chan was disappointed in the experience of working on THE PROTECTOR and returned to Hong Kong cinema to work with his frequent collaborator Edward Tang to make POLICE STORY and I want to thank him 37 years later for making that decision.

POLICE STORY can be streamed on HBO Max and The Criterion Channel (with a subscription) or can be rented from wherever digital movies are sold.