Product Details

• Actors: Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, Kwok-Hung Lam, Bill Tung
• Directors: Jackie Chan
• Writers: Edward Tang
• Producers: Leonard Ho, Raymond Chow
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: New Line Home Video
• VHS Release Date: June 15, 1999
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0780622030
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #262,038 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

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 costars shine, too. --Grant Balfour

Amazon.com essential video

This classic Jackie Chan picture opens with one of the wildest police action set pieces ever filmed, an extended chase that includes the total destruction of a hillside shanty settlement, as fleeing crooks and pursing cops crash down through it with their vehicles. Overall, however, the picture is an awkward mixture of clashing elements. At first it is a little strange seeing Chan playing it (mostly) straight in a hard-edged police thriller. The fights are all extremely ferocious and real-looking, without the lighthearted slapstick stylization that leavens his best period vehicles, like Project A, Part II. The comedy elements (especially a recurrent cake-in-the-face gag) seem to come out of nowhere; they are no longer integral to the spirit of the movie. But there are wonderful set pieces, stunts, and action scenes, including Jackie struggling to answer a dozen jangling phones at once, when he's left alone at the police station, and the all-out, glass-smashing fervor of a climactic battle royal in a shopping mall. --David Chute

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally - the release we've been waiting for!, December 20, 2006

By 

Ivan K. Samuelson "Bolski" (OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jackie Chan's Police Story (Special Collector's Edition) (DVD)

I first saw Police Story back in 1989 on VHS. I loved it and thought it was a riot. The fight scenes were great and I just couldn't believe the things Jackie Chan would do to put action on the screen. That is what makes his movies so great. You see the action and amazing stunts and you KNOW that is Jackie doing it, not some stunt double and since he's doing it, it's not that unbelievable. Plus, he knows how to be funny on screen and it works so well with everything going on. His fighting style is not some fancy martial arts. Like Jackie says, it's street fighting and unlike other heroes, Jackie gets so beat up and yet he still gets up and makes you cheer for the good guy.

Now, with this DVD release, you get the movie the way it was. The VHS was at 90 minutes. This version is at 101 minutes which means there were some added scenes which I can't remember for the life of me. It's been so long since I saw the VHS version that I don't know what scenes were put back in.

You can watch it in the English dubbed voices in 5.1, in the original Cantonese in 5.1 or the original Cantonese in mono. Personally, I love it in the Cantonese language because when they dub to American, they try to change the dialog a bit to fit the lip movement. With the Cantonese track, you get to feel the real emotions that the actors used in the scene. Also, unlike his later films, Jackie did NOT dub his own voice in here on the English track.

You would think that is where it would end with this, but no. There is so much more here than the movie.

First off, you have commentary by Rush Hour director Brett Ratner and Asian Film Expert Bey Logan. It's too bad Jackie didn't lend his comments as well. I would have loved that. However, you do get a conversation with Jackie Chan that lasts about 10 minutes where he goes over the stunt work, how he likes to do his own stunts, etc. It is especially interesting to know that they didn't have the budget to rehearse various stunt scenes, so they did them usually in one take. This resulted in some serious injuries, especially with the bus scene. It's amazing to hear how some people came close to death making this film, but when you watch the film, you can see why.

There is also a 35-minute feature where they speak with the people of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team (Sing Ga Ban). Here, many members of this team talk about what everyone's role was, how great it was to work with Jackie, etc. A VERY interesting retrospective on Jackie and his work ethic.

There is also a 6 minute feature that is a tribute to Jackie Chan with Brett Ratner talking about how this movie is so great.

Along with all of this, you also get various deleted scenes, alternate opening and ending as well as a deleted scenes montage that shows some scenes wrapped in between the released scenes so you can see where they would have fit in.

If you've never seen a Jackie Chan film before (what rock have you been under if you haven't?), then see this one first. The stunt work and action is raw and in real time. No wires, no digital enhancements, just pure, raw stunt work caught on film in real time.

Excellent DVD release and it's about time!

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars jackie chan police story, August 2, 2005

By 

Robert W. Pace - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jackie Chan's Police Story (DVD)

Awesome movie crappy DVD. Looks worse than the vhs tape I have. You can't turn the subtitles off so you have english and korean or whatever it is on the screen at the same time. Also the dvd pixalates (breaks-up) quite often, not even worth a $ 1 do not buy or you will be very dissapointed. Hopefully someone will realize that this movie was released with an english soundtrack and re-release it properly along with The Big Brawl. DO NOT BUY!!!!!

Well they re-released this awesome movie and it looks great BUT they changed the dubbed voices so now everyone sounds different including Jackie they also changed some of the dialogue not quite what I wanted but hey I guess it's out right.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Movie on Jackie Chan's Terms, June 8, 2011

By 

D. C. Ober "Audiophile" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jackie Chan's Police Story (Special Collector's Edition) (DVD)

For many Americans their first introduction to the work of Jackie Chan was in his fish out of water Hollywood fare like the Rush Hour movies or his 90s Hong Kong imports like Rumble in the Bronx. But Chan first attempted to break into the American market a decade or so before these films were released in theaters. Back in the eighties Jackie Chan first tried to do what only a few Asian stars before him were capable of accomplishing: become an accepted fixture of American cinema. The result was the less than stellar 1985 Hollywood action film, The Protector, which paired the Asian superstar with Danny Aiello and placed him in the middle of a decaying urban milieu. Not only was the film a box office disappointment, but Jackie Chan clashed with the director. Having experience in the director's chair, Jackie objected to the film's shoddy workmanship, unnecessary vulgarities, and quotidian action sequences. After his debilitating experience on The Protector and feeling rejected by American audiences, Chan decided to make a film completely on his own terms. The result, Police Story, not only boasts of Jackie Chan's most impressive stunts and iconic action, but also became the start of his most successful film franchise.

The first Police Story film veers somewhat wildly between gritty urban cop action and broad relationship slapstick. Jackie Chan plays Ka Kui Chan, a police inspector who is assigned witness protection duty after a botched police sting codenamed "Operation Boar Hunt." Chan's superiors believe they possess just enough evidence to convict kingpin Chu Tao so long as they can convince his moll, Selina Fong to testify against her boss and paramour. In order to get Fong to reflexively sting her boss, Chan's superiors make it appear as if she is already working for the police by separating her from her lawyer and making sure Chan is an obvious police detail. If Chu Tao turns on Fong, then they can rely on her to run to the police for protection.

None of this exactly goes according to plan. Chan's jealous girlfriend, May, becomes incensed when she discovers that he is housing another woman at his apartment. Despite the fact that May is a borderline offensive stereotype of a hysterical woman, I can see where she is coming from because Chan is kind of a cad. It might surprise many who are used to Jackie Chan's ability pull off an "aw shucks" shrug even as jumped buildings, ran up walls and climbed aboard vehicles at unsafe speeds but in 1985 he played a real jerk. In order to convince Fong to stay at his place, Chan hires a friend on the force to pretend to be a bedroom intruder hired by Fong's boss to kill her. Later, after Chan thinks his girlfriend May has left his apartment, he openly mocks her in front of his prize witness, unaware that May is just around the corner listening to him claim that he can get hundreds of other girls. (I almost felt bad for the actress playing May, Maggie Cheung, for being given such a thankless role. But I can't feel too bad for her because she will later put in some great work with some seminal Chinese directors like Wong Kar Wai and Zhang Yimou).

Perhaps the film's humor has been lost in translation or in the decade ("hey, it was the eighties" has become an acceptable excuse these days). Still, Jackie does a hell of a moon walk in order to wipe the bottom of his shoes clean, and a scene in which he juggles four phone lines at once reaches towards Buster Keaton levels of physical comedy (even if one of the emergency phone calls is so outrageously offensive that I have to believe it is a mistranslation). But I don't think you came to see a Jackie Chan film for his battle of the sexes humor. No, you came to see a Jackie Chan film for the tendon shearing, femur shattering stunts. In this regard the film unequivocally delivers. The opening raid is so ambitious that I doubted whether Jackie Chan could top it by the film's end, and while you can debate whether or not the film reaches the delirious heights of that raid, the closing fight in the mall sure as hell tries. In fact, several of the stunts in the raid have been borrowed by Hollywood films, but arguably to less effect. In order to evade the police, the drug dealers drive their cars straight through a shanty town, obliterating both the cars and anything in their path. Later, when trying to stop a bus that kingpin Chu Tao and his henchmen have commandeered, Chan blocks the street with a car and stares down the careening double decker with a pistol. The bus stops short, sending two criminals straight through the front window. Both scenes were borrowed by Bad Boys II and Tango and Cash, respectively, but, unlike Police Story, those films have glossy production values that somewhat mutes the action.

Jackie Chan does double duty as director, and it's safe to say he directs like he fights: with a cool, quick, economic style. He uses plenty of pans and zooms throughout the film, giving the movie a buoyant energy (add a couple of jump cuts and he's halfway there to making a French New Wave film), but the kinetic feel of his directing never trips up his own stunts. Unlike modern action directors, who rely on handheld cameras and quick cuts to give the vague concept of action without actually presenting anything interesting on the screen, Chan clearly wants to preserve his stunt work so the audience can see every roundhouse, every bruise. The film clocks in at a succinct hour and forty minutes, meaning that even if you don't enjoy the humor of mid-eighties Jackie Chan, you don't have to wait long to get to ass kicking Jackie Chan. If nothing else, the movie goes down smoothly and is endlessly rewatchable, inviting us to ask again and again, how the hell did he do that?