by Jeremy Clarke.
The Police Story trilogy is a landmark of Hong Kong motion cinema. As David West factors out in his informative essay within the accompanying booklet to Eureka’s welcome 4K UHD launch of the three movies, the primary was the purpose in Jackie Chan’s profession the place he broke with interval dramas to make a automobile for himself that was completely fashionable, set in modern Hong Kong relatively than an historic Chinese language previous and even the early twentieth century of his personal Mission A sequence. Motion movies set within the current began to emerge in Hong Kong within the early Nineteen Eighties, with a few them directed by Chan’s fellow former Peking Opera schoolmate Sammo Hung, who managed to safe roles for Jackie a way down the solid listing in Winners and Sinners (1983) and My Fortunate Stars (1985).
Each of Chan’s movies Mission A (1983) and Police Story (1985) have been profitable sufficient to spawn numerous sequels. Within the case of the latter franchise, the third one Police Story 3 – Supercop was the simple excessive level. (Alongside their UHD launch of the Police Story Trilogy, Eureka have additionally launched a standalone Blu-ray of that exact movie, which is nice information for anybody who doesn’t have a UHD prepared participant however desires a Blu-ray copy to go together with Eureka’s earlier releases of the primary two movies.) Among the many quite a few extras on the three-disc trilogy model, the PS1 disc contains a useful 20 minute archive interview of Chan discussing the way in which the movie was put collectively. It’s the varsity of filmmaking the place the principle participant has some sequence concepts he desires to place within the movie, and he will get in writers to construct a construction to include them and make the entire thing work.
Hitchcock did it with North by Northwest, wherein he needed a narrative to get to the scene of a person in a cornfield being pursued by an plane and a chase over the presidential heads of Mount Rushmore. Ray Harryhausen famously constructed his characteristic movies round a number of sequences wherein stop-frame puppets interacted with reside human actors.
It’s fascinating to see Chan articulating the identical methodology of working, explaining that he needed a scene of a automobile driving by destroying a shanty city, and a stunt scene involving a bus, amongst others, however wanted to know the place and tips on how to match them into a bigger entire to make a full-length film.
By the Nineteen Eighties, the martial arts star had established himself as a comedic counterpart to Bruce Lee in Hong Kong interval motion motion pictures; but as the last decade wore on, his movies harked again to the 2 nice, comedy stunt performer stars of Hollywood’s silent period, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, with whom he has been justifiably bracketed ever since. These two figures apart, there’s nobody remotely like Jackie Chan in the entire of cinema. You don’t must look any additional than the primary Police Story to see why.
Though principally an excuse to string collectively an incredible sequence of stunts, directed by Chan himself, Police Story has sufficient of a plot to carry collectively as a film. The star is solid as Chan Ka-Kui, a cop on the Royal Hong Kong Police Power, on this event assigned to take care of the secretary (Taiwanese actress Brigitte Lin) of against the law lord the police intend to prosecute. One among its many astonishing stunt sequences, an creative reboot of the cops-and-robbers chase, places fleeing villains in a double-decker bus and Chan on foot. Utilizing an umbrella deal with as a grappling hook, he first attaches himself to the again of the shifting bus, then hangs on to it by way of the open higher deck home windows, with the criminals contained in the bus making an attempt to push him off it at each alternative. In the present day, this could be completed by way of computer-generated results trickery however Jackie Chan did these things for actual. Once you see him dangling off the again of a bus, hanging on with an umbrella, that’s what occurred earlier than the cameras. (The umbrella on this scene was a specifically normal prop, for the reason that umbrellas in the stores in Hong Kong at the moment would have fallen aside if you happen to had tried to make use of them for this objective.)
Alongside likeable comedy scenes between Chan and Brigitte Lin and, elsewhere, Chan and Maggie Cheung (who performed his long-suffering girlfriend Could within the three movies) come different unimaginable stunt sequences. Bus chase however, Police Story’s greatest stunts are present in its opening and shutting scenes. Within the opening, Chan drives a automobile by a shanty city on a hillside, his automobile haphazardly demolishing the flimsy buildings because it goes. Within the shut, following an extended and completely entertaining battle sequence at a shopping center, he leaps off a high-level balcony to slip down a pole to the bottom. The pole is roofed with illuminated electrical gentle bulbs, which pop as his descending physique hits them.
Such scenes are clearly very harmful to movie, and a part of the joys of watching them is understanding that the hazard to the stunt performers could be very actual certainly. Chan capitalises on this by reducing collectively a montage of sequences that went improper for every movie– something from comedy sequences the place traces have been fluffed by the actors proper the way in which by to stuntmen getting injured when stunts don’t go fairly proper – and including this to the tip credit.
Maggie Cheung was critically injured within the second movie, Police Story II, when she was required to run by a sequence of metallic goalpost-like frames which have been toppling like dominoes. The timing of the set-up was off, and in direction of the tip of the run she acquired a nasty blow to the top. The movie, wherein Jackie’s Ka-Kui character pursues a gang of city bombers, is entertaining sufficient however usually reckoned the weakest of the three.
For the third movie, aware maybe of his personal limitations as a director, Chan handed over the reins to Stanley Tong, who would go on to make such Chan automobiles as Jackie Chan’s First Strike (aka Police Story IV, and never within the present field set) and Rumble within the Bronx, the movie on which Chan lastly cracked the American market. The mix of Tong’s stronger sense of narrative and Jackie Chan’s willpower to provide ground-breaking stunt work resulted in one thing that has arguably by no means been bettered when it comes to its stunt work. (Should you have been searching for one of the best when it comes to motion mixed with drama, that honour would most likely go to the harder-hitting cops and robbers outing Exhausting Boiled, the final movie to be made by director John Woo earlier than he left Hong Kong for Hollywood in 1993.)
The story ventures outdoors Hong Kong into mainland China, with Jackie teamed up with a Chinese language cop performed by Michelle Yeoh (then Michelle Khan). Below Tong’s route and with Jackie’s stunt enter, she proves his onscreen equal. Already a Hong Kong motion star in her personal proper, she would go on to main worldwide roles together with Bond film Tomorrow By no means Dies, Star Trek: Discovery and final yr’s All the pieces All over the place All at As soon as, for which she grew to become the primary Asian lady to win the Oscar for Finest Actress.
Each the Chan and Yeoh characters go undercover, he as a rural-born prisoner to win the arrogance of incarcerated medication gang member Yuen Wah (one other former Jackie Chan Peking Opera schoolmate), she as his sister, and following Chan and Wah’s daring break from a mining internment camp, Jackie and Michelle seem in a sequence of battle scenes the place it typically appears every is making an attempt to outdo the opposite when it comes to stunts. A scene at a corrupt basic’s jungle encampment sees the 2 stars working collectively, together with one scene the place he momentarily catches her by the breasts as she falls on high of him earlier than firing a gun on the enemy. Jackie additionally has a comedic sequence the place Maggie Cheung’s Could, working as a tour information in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur, spots Jackie and practically blows his cowl whereas Michelle tries to forestall catastrophe.
The 2 greatest scenes, together with the one for which the movie is mainly remembered, come in direction of the tip previous to a formidable battle between Jackie and villains atop a rushing items practice. Yeoh grabs onto the facet of the van wherein a few of the criminals are escaping for a hair-raising journey by site visitors. At one level, she raises herself up by her fingers, in a transfer that appears like one thing out of ballet (wherein she skilled from age 4 till an harm curtailed that profession), to keep away from being hit by a close-passing coach.
You’d suppose this couldn’t be topped, however then Jackie leaps off a constructing to seize a rope ladder dangling from a helicopter carrying extra villains and proceeds to fly a number of thousand toes above Kuala Lumpur, narrowly avoiding a mosque spire and crashing by an promoting billboard as he goes.
It’s not possible to look at these two sequences, notably the rope ladder one, with out imagining what may have gone improper. Fortunately, nothing did. They’re, fairly merely, jaw dropping. For causes of security, they wouldn’t have been allowed or tried in every other movie trade than Hong Kong’s at the moment (though the Hollywood silent period would have permitted such issues had transit vans and helicopters existed then). Aided by its sense of scale – the huge, largely empty area round its performer as he dangles over the cityscape – the helicopter / rope ladder sequence has earned its place in movie historical past as the one most spectacular stunt ever tried in a characteristic movie. Today, such display pictures could be realised with assistance from computer-generated results, so the stunt’s place within the pantheon of movie historical past is prone to stay unchallenged.
All three movies include an awesome array of extras, together with a number of cuts and totally different language dubs, some with quite a lot of audio codecs. This implies, as an illustration, you could watch the Hong Kong Police Story 3 minimize and the shorter US minimize, in Cantonese (authentic mono or new Dolby Atmos dub) or in American English. All three have two specifically recorded commentaries. One set is by Frank Djeng (NY Asian Movie Pageant) and F J DeSanto, which tends to be weightier, noting, as an illustration, that the final reel of Police Story 3 looks like, past the movie, flirting with loss of life. That is the place you study that Golden Harvest needed Stanley Tong to direct as a result of Jackie had taken eternally to finish his latest, self-directed Miracles and Armour of God. The opposite set is extra knockabout, by motion cinema consultants Mike Leeder and Arne Venema, who appear to know all people in shot and take nice enjoyment of declaring which stunt pictures of Jackie or Michelle are the truth is Jackie or Michelle – and which pictures are most likely doubles.
All in all, it is a unbelievable bundle and the transfers look nice. For the 4K film transfers within the field set, you’ll want a UHD-compatible participant to look at them, however the standalone Police Story 3 Blu-ray is a 1080 HD presentation that’ll play on any Blu-ray participant.
The Police Story Trilogy is launched on UHD Blu-ray within the UK and Police Story 3 on customary Blu-ray by Eureka! Leisure.
Jeremy Clarke’s web site is jeremycprocessing.com
