Post by ronnierocketago on Feb 16, 2009 17:51:10 GMT
POLICE STORY (1985) - ***1/2
"It's very important that I get hurt [when making a movie]" - Jackie Chan
My American generation fell in love with Jackie Chan, effectively helping him become a Hollywood star with RUMBLE IN THE BRONX, for his superhuman-esque brawls, his touches of slapstick comedy amidst the punches and kicks, and especially for his own legendary daredevil suicidal stunts. Remember this was the decade when pro wrestler Mick Foley was more internationally famous for his near-fatal falls than his previous-decades' worth of ring work. I think we were all shocked that none of them killed him (so far), like his unprotected leap between apartments in BRONX. Then we see POLICE STORY, and wonder if he's like an immortal from HIGHLANDER or something.
But grown up now, I realize now that we somehow amazingly still took Chan for granted.
I mean think about it. In this age of CGI and goddamn wire-fu, I actually admire Chan's career prime work much now, for at his best he was that charming tiny-but-tough little bastard who somehow walks away from anything that people throw at him, or throw him at. I'm in awe of his physicality in pulling off eye-boggling stunts and for his insanely brutal-but-gracefully choreographed fights...all especially more impressive these days because they were all produced without any digital cheating. What you see is what you get.
POLICE STORY came about supposedly because THE PROTECTOR, his would-be Hollywood breakthrough fizzled because the U.S. director dismissed Chan's Hong Kong martial arts cinema, saying that Americans would "never sit still." With POLICE STORY, Chan replied fuck you.
I mean take that early sequence at the shanty town on the side of the hill, when Chan and some villains drive right through it, demolishing that whole community to ruins. Michael Bay ripped it off for his lame BAD BOYS II, but with $130 million more in CGI and explosions, it's still simply pitiful in comparison to the original inspiration in terms of sheer excitement that these guys actually paid and built this junkyard village, and promptly shred it into pieces! So director Chan proved that he could produce adrenaline-pumping over-the-top action spectacles beyond his usual bravado stuntwork, which you also get with the bus scene:
Yup, Chan dragging and hanging onto a runaway double-decker bus by an umbrella, and if during those wild sharp turns he had slipped, he would have been dead roadkill. Though notice that last shot of the thugs falling through the glass after the bus stopped. Apparently those stuntmen were all supposed to land on the car, but they missed and some landed on their heads. Ouch.
As a director, Chan doesn't get credit for a successful comedy set-piece where all-alone at the police precinct, he has a futile attempt to attend to all the phone calls, only to get all tangled up literally. I did laugh at that whole hilarious montage where cop Chan is posing for those lame goofy PSA advertisements about the evils of jaywalking, taking drugs, and not wearing their seatbelts. If it was Dirty Harry in this situation, you know what he would deadpan quip: "Swell."
The POLICE story is your usual cop-going-after-gangster formula, but whatever. Unlike many of Chan's other popular Hong Kong hits, STORY is less comedy/action and more a weird blend between a hard-boiled DIRTY HARRY police boiler, and Chan's usual trademark comedy. It's like Chan wanted to be his usual badass "nick guy-stuck-in-a-deadly-mess" shtick, but willing to come off as a clueless asshole in spite of all that. I mean take that scene when he takes his female witness home, which Chan's girlfriend misinterprets, cue laughs and a cake to his face. Haha. But while he's railing off in the shower about his woman disrespecting him, she returned and he just keeps badmouthing her to hell and back. He gets another cake to the face, one he did deserve. Haha
That's good, but POLICE suffers with this whole DIRTY HARRY-esque lengthy trial scene with no action or laughs that just drags on and on, manipulative melodrama as the mobster's slimeball lawyer gets him off the hook. Like Americans, I guess the Chinese also hate lawyers in their action cinema. I don't think STORY is entirely successful by Chan's mixing the two different sub-genres together, but I must give him respect for trying at least to do something a little different. The Moonwalking dance-joke was just random.
Oh what am I fucking kidding here? Who gives a shit about such petty criticisms of mine when Chan gives us that whole fucking insane unbelievable epic finale at the shopping mall, with enough broken glass in under 10 minutes to shame DIE HARD. Chan was a marque name before POLICE STORY, but I honestly think that it was this very segment that turned Chan from a mere Asian movie star to a bonafide legend within the annals of global action cinema, when his ballsy/batshit insane reputation for risking his life for only a brief stunt shot was clinched with not one but two moments (at least) when the audiences grimace and yell owww! in unison. My favorite is Chan motorcycle-driving a henchmen through a storefront window. Tires to the balls!
The first time Chan tried that flip over the stairs onto the display below, he was rushed to the hospital because he wasn't breathing. But no, Mr. Chan wasn't satisfied with that petty wound, no sir! He suffered second-degree burns on his hands from sliding down that electrified pole from several stories up, and from the crash landing onto the glass, he almost broke his seventh and eight vertebrate in his spine, and dislocated his pelvis. And yet that's not even his worst set-injury.
In short, Chan is calling WANTED a pussy.