"Police Story"(1985)d/Jackie Chan

For those of you that might be pondering which movie singlehandedly revolutionized the modern action film, tax your grey stuff no longer, we're about to cover it here in Chan-uary at the Wop.If you've been captivated by breathtaking, mile-a-minute action accomplished through wirework or computer generated-means in recent action fare, there's a solid chance that whoever coordinated those sequences drew inspiration in some way from tonight's review, the film that Chan himself declared would be the ultimate cop movie that his Hollywood failure, The Protector(1985) should have been.One-upping himself after already broadening the scope of Hong Kong action standards with Project A(1983) might have proved a tall order for anyone else in the world, but Chan makes it look nearly effortless here, were it not for the brutal blooper reel during the end credits that reveal the inevitable contusions and fractures that come with serving up stunts that border on certifiable insanity, the like the world had never seen before.A far cry from the budget-heavy explosion fests Hollywood was showing audiences at the time(yet influential to movies like Tango and Cash and Bad Boys II), the hugely successful film(and Jackie's personal favorite), a Best Film and Best Action Choreography winner at the 1986 Hong Kong Film Awards, has spawned four sequels to date.Sharing the marquee with Chan this time around are Brigitte Lin, Maggie Cheung, and Feng Ko An, among others.This one saw regular airplay at my place in the VHS days of yesteryear, as my co-conspiritors will attest to, and stands as my personal favorite modern Chan-man flick, bar none.Forwards.

No CGI or wirework here, folks.
During an early morning shantytown drug raid, botched by Inspector Man, a crooked cop on the take, his partner, Kevin Chan(Jackie Chan), orchestrates a car chase through a mountainside full of collapsing huts and exploding gas cannisters, then traverses the entire mountain when his suspect, a drug lord named Chu Tao (Yuen Chor), hijacks a double decker bus in a rush to avoid justice.Chan hooks a ride on the speeding bus with his umbrella, gets knocked off in traffic, and still somehow manages to get in front of the vehicle and send it to a screeching, glass-shattering halt just inches from him, as he collars his disbelieving perpetrator.Afterwards, Chan is awarded a spot as a media representative of the police force, then given the task of bodyguarding Chu Tao's secretary, Selina(Brigitte Lin), who's scheduled to testify for the prosecution against her former boss.One of Chan's buddies(Mars) on the force breaks into her apartment in a mock attempt to silence her(comedy ensues), and on the way out to her car, they're attacked by real bat-wielding thugs, barely escaping in one piece due to Chan's amazing fighting skills.When they arrive at Chan's apartment, his girlfriend May(Maggie Cheung) and her friends surprise him with a birthday party, but a nightie-rocking Selina on Chan's arm causes the jealous squeeze to smoosh the cake into his moosh.Scooter hijinks, false bravado, more cake-facedness.Selina, who notices the face of her earlier attacker in a police academy photo, tampers with Chan's tape recorded testimony and breaks the fuck out like a yeast infection in the middle of the night, leaving Chan to embarrass himself in court with a cassette full of sexual innuendo between he and the missing witness.Chan loses face, Chu gets bail.

I bet there's a lotta broads who'd rather jump off a roof than put up with another second's worth of my shit.Just sayin'.
Chan later arrives to rescue Selina, who's feigning having been kidnapped, only to get framed in the murder of Inspector Man by a vengeful Chu.When he's placed under arrest at the station, he snaps, temporarily taking the Superintendent(Lam Kwok-Hung) hostage at gunpoint to buy himself enough time to clear his name and apprehend Chu.When the gangster's men botch rubbing out Selina, she spitefully downloads all of Chu's incriminating computer data at an office in a large indoor mall, alerting his thugs to the sudden theft, and ushering in a violently adaptive martial finale inside the shopping center between Chan and Chu's thugs, who take turns smashing each other into various perishables and belt-driven interfloor transportation in the quest for Selina's briefcase.In the melee, the valise plummets several stories to the ground floor, where May retrieves it, only to get roughhoused by Chu and his men.In the "Holy Fuck" moment of the movie, which is ripe with several to begin with, from the top floor, Chan jumps from the ledge onto an electrified pole and slides down through and ocean of breaking bulbs and raw electricity, smashing through a glass ceiling before reaching the ground level, where he's finally able to cuff Chu.His fellow officers turn a blind eye as he punches up the druglord's silver-tongued lawyer, and kicks Chu through a glass display case.We freeze frame on Chan in mid-attack, being held back by his associates.Cue theme song and blooper reel over end credits.

"No thanks, I was just window shopping...with my face."
As always, avoid the New Line redubbed, re-edited cut on dvd or bluray, and spend the extra scratch on a Chinese or Japanese print(Dragon Dynasty, if you can snare one), which oughta include anywhere from ten to sixteen extra minutes of footage, if that's your bag, man.Chan would cameo in Kara Hui's Naughty Boys(1986) vehicle, before tackling Armor of God the following year.Brigitte Lin would again share the spotlight with Chan in Peking Opera Blues in 1986, before landing roles in genre staples like The Bride With the White Hair(1993) and it's sequel a year later, and Chungking Express(1994).Cheung would reprise her role as Chan's girlfriend in Police Story 2(1988) and 1992's Supercop, the third in the series, before appearing opposite Jet Li and Donnie Yen in Hero(2002).Chan's epic pole slide resulted in burned mitts, breaking two vertebrae in his spine, and dislocating his pelvis.I honestly don't know how anybody could ever settle for less in an action star after pondering such amazing footnotes.On a note of much lesser importance, Chan also croons the theme here, which was a huge hit, borrowed by a HK tv series, the HK police in recruitment commercials, and finally, New Line for their later Chan vehicle, First Strike(1994), the fourth of the series.This one should be on your shelves in some format.A perfect four Wops.See it now!

I would have taken the escalator, but that's just me.

"Twin Dragons"(1992)d/Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam

We'll spinning wheel kick-off the martial month of Chan-uary with a choice chunk of chopsocky comedy co-directed by the able duo of Ringo Lam, of City on Fire/Prison on Fire(both 1987)fame, and Tsui Hark, the man who gave you We're Going to Eat You(1980), among others.With all proceeds from the film benefitting the Hong Kong Director's Guild, the men assembled an impressive list of co-stars for Chan(who was coming off the international success of Armour of God II a year earlier), including genre vets like David Chiang, Maggie Cheung, Nina Li Chi(who would go on to marry Jet Li), Wang Lung Wei and an assload of cameos from directors like Hark and Lam themselves, John Woo, Ng See Yuen, Kirk Wong, Wong Jing, and even Liu Chia Liang himself.The plot, sort of a kung fu Corsican Brothers, allows for Jackie to showcase his mastery of physical comedy a la Buster Keaton while supplying the viewer with multiple rewind-worthy "Holy Fuck!" stunts and smoothly choreographed fights, as was par for the course by this point in Chan's career.The result is a dizzying, laugh-packed joyride that you're bound to enjoy, heads and tails over Jean Claude Van Damme's similar Double Impact(1991) with a lot less denim-wrapped cazzies hitting the floor(Van Damme never passed up an opportunity to throw a side split into a scene that didn't need one), despite some shoddy blue screen effects work when attempting to frame Chan's twins in the same shot.This one might not rank in the top five Chan films of all-time, but it's not a bad hundred minutes full of fight scenes, pretty girls, car chases, explosions, and comedy, and besides, where else are you gonna find a bulky fro-sporting asian named Rocky in a spiked up vest with an Iron Maiden back patch?Nowhere but here, I'm here to tell you.And compared to frown-inducing recent Chan wirefests like The Medallion(2003) or The Tuxedo(2002), this may as well be Project A(1983), ferchrissakes.Onwards!

Prince(Jackie Chan) helps Ah Wei(Wang Lung Wei) inspect a sheet of coffee table glass for imperfections.
A big nosed Chinese family's twin boys are separated when Crazy Keung(Kirk Wong) attempts a daring hospital escape in a black and white flashback, and one of the twins ends up on the doorstep of a booze-chugging party girl(Mabel Cheung), while the other is raised by the natural parents.Ma(Jackie Chan) becomes a critically acclaimed concert pianist, while his brother Prince(also Jackie) becomes a street-wise petty criminal/ automechanic/race car driver with a twisted midget sidekick named Tarzan(Teddy Robin).Tarzan, always getting his pal into trouble, barges in on a private karaoke session at Boss Wing(Alfred Cheung)'s place, cueing a massive nightclub scrap between Prince and all of Wing's thugs, led by Ah Wei(Wang Lung Wei), that culminates in a failed rescue of a blue-wigged singer(Maggie Cheung) and Prince's reluctant agreeance to race for big money stakes.Meanwhile, Ma prepares for a high profile recital, mostly unreceptive to the busty charms of a childhood sweetheart named Tong Sum(Nina Li Chi), who's been sneaking around on her brutish boyfriend, Rocky, behind his back, adorned with obligatory Maiden back patch, naturally.Both twins, totally unaware of the other's existence, find themselves compelled to act out each other's own motions and gestures, with the pianist cranking invisible monkey wrenches and the criminal fingering out arpeggios on an invisible keyboard at odd moments.Inevitably, they bump into each other in a hotel restroom and get switched, with side-splitting results.Ma takes an instant shine to Barbara, the nightclub singer, who sings a tender ballad while he accompanies her on piano, while Prince provides the muscle necessary to send Tong into a tizzy when he upgrades her backrub to full-blown intercourse.

"Take a backfist into the wall and call me in the morning!", prescribes the doctor(Liu Chia Liang).
Meanwhile, Ma is forced to drive a getaway bus at gunpoint during Crazy Keung's latest escape attempt, with asphalt-based mayhem resulting, and Prince has no choice but to conduct Ma's recital, cigarette dangling from his lip, as he stumbles, backflips, and horseybacks around the auditorium full of shocked music lovers and compliant musicians who are following his frenetic baton.With all involved parties ignorant to the fact that there are two identical brothers, the men learn to use their uncanny resemblance to each other to their benefit; Prince makes short work of Rocky in a department store, causing the brute to later kautau to Ma(thinking that he's Prince) and beg to be taken on as a student.In the hotel room, the confusion reaches boiling point as Tong interrupts the men to take a relaxing bath, unaware that she's naked as nature intended in front of both of them, as both playfully share the tub with her.When a jilted Barbara barges in, they are forced to reveal themselves to the girls, who faint at the sight of them together.After the thugs kidnap Tarzan, Ma and Prince pool their resources with a daring rescue scheme involving a Hong Kong pier and a magnetic crane, before ending up in a nearby auto-testing facility.After much gravity-defying martial action in temperature-controlled climate rooms and in and around crash test vehicles transpires, the twins end up victorious, with the mob boss slamming head first into a wall inside a car with no seatbelt at a speed conducive to instant concrete and twisted metal death.We later see the twins' father passing out at the first sight of his long lost son, Prince, as he's about to be married to Tong in a dual ceremony with his brother Ma marrying Barbara, except Prince gets cold feet and tries to duck out the side door.When the wedding party rushes outside to catch up with him, neither woman can identify her husband-to-be, with Barbara noting that it doesn't matter afterall, to the freeze-framed horror of both men.

"Why yes, Jet Li, I am in a bathtub with your wife.Very observant of you."
The movie earned over HK $33 million upon release, but just over 8 million when re-released to North American audiences by Dimension Pictures, this cut being eleven minutes shorter, with a different musical score, and different ADR provided by Chan himself five years later, the least successful of Chan's movies re-edited for American moviegoers, torn to pieces by fickle critics on this side of the pond who most likely knew nothing about the guy before 1995's Rumble in the Bronx anyway.Hell, most hardcore genre nuts only turned on to Jackie after his episode of The Incredibly Strange Film show aired, while those of us in the know saw his worldwide success coming at least twelve years prior to any of that mainstream exposure.We'll be covering films from each of Chan's different periods this month, of course, so stay the course with the Wop and acquire the martial movie knowledge to maintain the daily levels of smartassery necessary to loom titan-sized over all your ignorant friends.The proceeds for tonight's entry were originally intended to be used for construction of a headquarters for the Hong Kong Director's Guild, but never got off the ground.Don't let the visible matte lines scare you away from checking this one out, with light comedy and some breath-taking action sequences and stunts(though Chan would top everything he does here several times over before he was finished), Dragons scores an impressive three Wops on the scale, and comes recommended.

"Look closely at this shoe!"