Jackie Chan in the Police Story films: how martial arts superstar pulled off astonishing stunts in the action movie classics
- Chan mixes martial arts, comedy, and stunts to good effect, but it is for the latter that the Police Story films stand out
- Particularly memorable are scenes where Chan climbs a moving bus using an umbrella, slides down a pole exploding electric lights, and dodges firecrackers
Police Story and its sequel are nostalgic watches today for most viewers.
Back when the films were made, in 1985 and 1988, Jackie Chan was a much-loved local icon who represented the energetic, get-it-done values of Hongkongers. What’s more, the police are depicted as a non-politicised group of committed public servants who strictly adhere to police procedure – and are punished by their superiors if they deviate from the rules.
How the Hong Kong public’s perceptions have changed.
Capitalising on the success of Project A, which set the template for the mix of martial arts, stunts, and comedy that came to define Chan’s style, the Police Story movies saw him expand the dramatic qualities of his work. Part one still features cheesy slapstick comedy, but both instalments take a relatively serious approach to their characters, the story, and police work.
He plays with his imagination. There’s not a lot you can do to be creative with kung fu – you only have two hands and two legs
Both films feature Chan as Chan Ka-kui, an honest, good-natured cop who is forced into situations where he has to go outside the law to nab the villains. This brings on the ire of his superiors, who demote him, and even remove him from duty.
As in the first instalment, Ka-kui is forced to go it alone to capture the criminals.
In his 1997 book Hong Kong Cinema: The Hidden Dimensions, Hong Kong critic Stephen Teo wrote of Chan’s role in Police Story and its sequel: “Displaying a wider range of emotions expertly integrated into the narrative, so that the movie plays like a light drama rather than an uneven spread of comedy and tragedy, the character has remained the one the actor would most like to be identified with.”
Who was Wong Fei-hung, martial arts legend played by Jet Li?
The stunts are some of Chan’s most memorable. Police Story features three of Chan’s most famous stunt scenes – the destruction of a whole squatter village by a fleet of cars during a chase, a sequence in which Chan climbs up the side of a speeding double-decker bus by using an umbrella as a hook, and a dangerous scene in which he slides down a pole in a shopping mall, exploding electric lights as he descends.
Chan says that even he found the latter stunt frightening, and thought it might kill him. His anxious shout before the jump is genuine, he says.
The stunt theme of Police Story 2 is explosives, and it features some rough-looking scenes of villains throwing firecrackers at Chan, which explode on clothing primed with petrol and kerosene.
A warehouse is blown up at the end – the massive explosion, which took place at the end of the shoot, is real – and there’s also a famed sequence in which Chan jumps from a second-storey building onto the top of a moving double-decker bus, dodges an overhanging sign, then leaps through a glass window (he suffered a deep cut on his hand as a result).
The Police Story series brought the work of the Jackie Chan’s Stuntmen Association, the stunt team he had formed in 1979, to the fore. Stunt team members need to be careful when fighting Chan, said long-serving stunt team member Benny Lai Keung-kuen, who features heavily in Police Story 2 as a deaf and mute taekwondo expert. “You have to control your punches. If you actually hit him, you will get into trouble!” he said in an interview for Criterion’s Blu-ray release of the film.
“Jackie likes to play around with many offbeat things to attract the audience,” stunt team member Mars (also known as Chiang Wing-fat) told the Film Archive. “He plays with his imagination. There’s not a lot you can do to be creative with kung fu – you only have two hands and two legs. The important features are things like props, which you coordinate with the action to come up with offbeat ideas to entertain the audience.”
The destruction of the squatter village in the first film, during which cars crash through ramshackle buildings on a hillside, created problems for the stunt team. The noise of the cars, the collapsing buildings, and the explosions led to a general confusion, and the stunt players did not know which way they were supposed to run. Some were hurt as a result.
The stunt in which Chan stops a bus by parking a car in the road in front of it also did not go as planned. One stuntman was meant to fly out through the windscreen, and a further two through the upstairs window, landing on the car to break their fall. But the air-brake system on the bus caused it to move backwards a little, and all the stuntmen missed the parked car and hit the concrete road surface instead.
Jackie Chan’s 10 best films ranked, from Police Story to The Foreigner
Chan adapted an umbrella for his legendary climb up the outside of the bus. “That was a specially strengthened umbrella, as it was made of metal, not wood,” he told this writer in an interview in 1997. “I was trying to think of a way that I could get up the side of the bus quickly. I always like to do new things, and I saw an umbrella, and suddenly got the idea to use one for the stunt,” he said.
According to stuntman Lai, the firecrackers that are used as weapons were not specialised props, but commercial items bought from a store in Macau – firecrackers are illegal in Hong Kong. “In one scene, Jackie was tied up and I was throwing firecrackers at him, hitting him here and there. I accidentally threw one too high and I hit him in the eye. That hurt his eye. His arms and torso were not a problem, but hitting his face was dangerous,” said Lai.
Amusingly considering the title, according to a story in the Post in 1985, four crew members and a producer were arrested during the shoot for traffic offences. A flotilla of fake police cars and motorcycles caused “serous traffic congestion” on Princess Margaret Road while being filmed. Arrests were made, and the film crew were later released on HK$500 bail each.
“It is a sensitive thing,” the producer told the Post then.
In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre. Read our comprehensive explainer here.
Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook
