Okay, I've watched the first three PS movies now and this may be my favorite of the trilogy. I'm not sure it tops the previous ones as far as the martial arts choreography goes though to be fair. As always, these are just my thoughts after an initial viewing. Sometimes you feel differently about a film after you re-watch it. I really like the alternate title for this movie, Super Cop. I actually would rather call this the Super Cop series than Police Story quite honestly. Interesting note, the Hong Kong Rescue release features a hybrid audio track that has the original language audio along with the supposedly superior sound effects from the English dub. I opted to watch the movie this way.
So this movie is your typical undercover type story line where Jackie has to infiltrate a criminal organization by pretending to be a criminal himself. He is a Hong Kong cop though and this was a Chinese operation, so he gets a Chinese agent to assist him in this operation.
So on that note, the real selling point of this movie to me is Michelle Yeoh, a legend within this genre of movies. It's nice after two movies to finally see Jackie get a partner, and not just any partner, but one as equally badass as he is. Michelle Yeoh has some great scenes where she gets to show off her fighting abilities and she even has a few crazy stunts, which was a nice surprise as I'm used to Jackie doing all of the crazy stunts. She even has one stunt that feels like a call back to the first Police Story, where she's essentially replacing Jackie's role. Michelle Yeoh is TOUGH. Look at the stunt in the gif below:
Right after that brutal landing, she falls off of the car, and rolls down the street. The stunts overall in this movie are pretty great with Jackie doing crazy shit like this:
As is typical with Jackie's movies, there's some comedy bits involving him and Michelle as well. Some of the best bits are when the two of them are working together and lots of mishaps occur due to neither one of them being used to working with a partner. I loved this because it's completely believable. You don't just develop cohesion with someone over night. Plus, both of them are trying to overcome their own egos with Jackie in particular feeling like he doesn't need her help. Overall though, I felt that there was fewer comedy in this one than the previous two. In fact, it kind of feels like with each new installment we get a bit less comedy as the series seems to gradually get more and more serious, but I enjoyed the little bit of comedy that I got from this one though.
This is the movie where I felt like I was finally sick of Jackie's girlfriend. I didn't mind her in the last two, but in this one we see her once again having an emotional overreaction to something, which is kind of the norm for her character. Three movies in, and that finally started irritating me a bit. Also, she does something completely boneheaded in this movie that really annoyed me a lot. I'm ready for her to be written out of these movies at this point. She gets less screen time overall than in the previous two movies, and I didn't feel like the movie suffered as a result. When she actually WAS onscreen, she was kind of annoying. Frankly, given how cool all of Jackie's scenes with Michelle Yeoh were, his girlfriend just seemed to get in the way when she gets brought into the story.
The rest of the characters are great. There's one cop character from the first two movies noticeably missing in this one for some reason. I kind of missed him.
So overall, this was a fun movie with some great action and stunts. No part of the movie dragged on for me or lost my interest and I think this is the first of the Police Story movies I've seen that I can say that about. This one has pretty good pacing. If there is one flaw it's that the movie doesn't have any particular fight that really stands out. There aren't really any badass fighters to truly test Jackie or Michelle Yeoh in this movie, most of the fights are them just taking on generic thugs. However, there is a bit more gun play here than the previous two movies which I enjoyed. It was nice to just see Jackie shooting people for a change instead of punching and kicking everyone like most of his movies. One section of the movie plays out like something from a Rambo movie with a lot of fire fights and explosions and Jackie and Michelle getting caught up in the middle of it all. This is where the aforementioned, "mishaps" occur as well. Nice mix of great action and laughs here.
I hope the remaining Police Story movies are this awesome. I want to see these two paired up again. I also am aware that Michelle Yeoh has some cop movies of her own that I look forward to watching. This movie is an easy thumbs up. As much as I love Jackie Chan, I feel like it's even MORE fun when I get to see movies where he is co-starring with other people. Jackie's career was great not just because HE was great, but also because he surrounded himself with other people who were great too.
