Police Story, as its title may suggest, is a police procedural which keeps its story basic in order to better serve as a vehicle for Jackie Chan's truly superlative fight scene choreography. It is literally a lean, mean fighting machine.

The success of Jackie Chan's technique emerges from the lesson of two cinematic masters: Chaplin and Hitchcock. Chaplin taught us that we love to root for the underdog, to see someone on the bottom work hard and be rewarded for his success (this is the simplest distillation of the Tramp character). Chan's protagonist is an average cop taking on a giant drug cartel, and we see his struggles (he takes as much punishment as he dishes out) and rejoice with…

The first 15 minutes of Police Story are probably not the wisest thing to watch when you're in the middle of a dodgy spell with your asthma.

With one of the most dangerous and insane car chases ever filmed, making The Blues Brothers look like Herbie Goes Bananas, ploughing through a shanty village with no regard for life, limb or automobile and then progressing on to an utterly astonishing fight and stunt scene in and around a moving bus, it is one of the greatest openings to an action film of all time.

Police Story is a film I've seen several times although not for quite a number of years and it really does stand up beautifully. I'm not even…

A poem for Police Story:

Action submerges the humankind's senses
In fantastical extensions of our defenses
The true art of action relies in exploiting
Human's abilities up to a point of rejoicing

The comedy/action mix finds its rhyme
When the proper circumstances gathered by time
Explode in a sea of action and mayhem
Contrasted with a heart of slapstick placed in
The middle of false accusations and framings

The greatest action star born in Hong Kong
Orchestrates mayhem like it was a song
With bullets, kicks, punches and stunts galore
Excrement moonwalking and then so much more

Are you a woman? A man? Jackie's lens says
That your share of action will hit you there
Regardless of your gender, beliefs…

I know that I’ve seen this before at least once, but the only bits I really remembered were the opening sequence (unsurprisingly, because it must be in contention for the best action scene ever filmed) and the big slide down a pole at the end (also unsurprisingly, because they show it four times). Unfortunately the stuff in between those moments of glorious insanity is a bit of a mixed bag, with the comedy scenes using goofy music to indicate that they’re supposed to be funny and the tone lurching wildly between slapstick and deadly serious. That’s probably a common complaint with Jackie’s films but the humour and drama are usually better integrated than this - and the fact that some…

Kicks off with an insane sequence of three cars crashing through a Hong Kong shanty town on a hill (and then Jackie foot-boarding behind a bus), before settling into a formulaic tale that owes a lot (but also fed back to) lots of Hollywood flicks - supercop hamstrung by authority/regulations can only defeat baddies by going rogue. The "romantic" angle is cringe-inducing to the max, with corny "Three's Company"-style misunderstandings and a whiny girlfriend that acts like a petulant child throughout. (This is Asian, after all, so I'm sure many here lapped that juvenile nonsense up). (The tough femme fatale character in witness protection works a lot better, granted, except in the slapstick bit with the fake slasher (and when…