Amazon.co.uk: Police Story: Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Bridget Lin: Video

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
Jackie Chan has become a genre unto himself, and watching Police Story, you'll understand why. The plot is minimal: Chan is a hero cop involved in a raid that goes wrong. He's assigned to guard a witness, the kingpin's attractive female secretary (Brigitte Lin). For the rest of the film, Chan's protecting himself from the secretary, from the gangsters out to silence her and from his own jealous girlfriend (Maggie Cheung). But watching Chan for plot is like watching porno for existential themes. While most modern action films steal cues from Westerns, Chan condenses those open mesas into the dense throngs of modern Hong Kong--and tosses in Buster Keaton slapstick. For example, when the opening raid goes haywire, there's an unbelievable car chase through the steep huddle of a hillside shantytown. That's through. No roads, just shacks. Flimsy shacks. As the film progresses, Chan scales a speeding bus using an umbrella, uses cow dung as an excuse to break into some Shaolin moonwalking and transforms an urban shopping mall into a demented gymnasium (think clothes racks, escalators, and lots of plate glass displays). Chan is amazingly versatile both physically and emotionally--and he's a secure enough star-director to let his co-stars shine, too. --Grant Balfour

Amazon.co.uk Review
That Jackie Chan's Hollywood output should have walked the thin line between engagingly awful and just awful should be no surprise having viewed Police Story, his breakthrough Hong Kong film. Not only starring but also directed by Chan, the film is a combination of risible plot, knockabout humour and stunning stunts--a kind of Carry On Kung Fu. The plot of the film finds itself lost in the high-octane stunts and matters so little that Chan's character is not even given another name to the actor's own. However, if you can put your critical facilities on hold, Police Story is enormous fun. The lines between good guys and bad guys are clearly drawn and most of the acting seems to be confined to running around and pointing and it's all worth it just to see the final fight sequence--a true spectacular set in a shopping mall, showing plainly why the film was dubbed "Glass Story" by the stunt teams. Perhaps this is why the film wins out so convincingly over its Hollywood counterparts. We know that it was Chan himself performing these breathtaking stunts and that he really did suffer for his art, the closing credits show him and others being carried off set to hospital on numerous occasions. Now that's what I call method acting.

On The DVD: The film's basic production values are something that even DVD cannot enhance (the opening titles visibly wobble) but that only adds to the film's charm. The audio options of Cantonese, subtitled or dubbed are extremely useful, with the latter-clearly voiced by a group of out of work actors in an LA sound studio, which only serves to enhance the movie's surreal quality. Hong Kong cinema expert Bey Logan's commentary is superb--giving an insight into Chan, his movies, the Asian film industry and its lasting influence on more mainstream cinema--and is delivered with such enthusiasm (particularly during the fight sequences) that it is hard not to get swept along by it all. --Phil Udell

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