Hacker Cinema
Police Story
警察故事
1985 · Film · 99 min
Part of Police Story Collection
Directed by Jackie Chan
Officer Chan Ka Kui manages to put a major Hong Kong drug dealer behind the bars practically alone, after a shooting and an impressive chase inside a slum. Now, he must protect the boss' secretary, Selina, who will testify against the gangster in court.
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5 comments on Hacker News
I think it makes sense that historically American film focused on narrative based dramas and slow burn horror. Think of classic Hollywood hits such as Citizen Kane and Psycho. This is even apparent in the recent success of Obsession, which really follows strongly in the trend of Hitchcock, magical realism, human drama, psychological horror.
Compare this with historically successful Honk Kong films: Kung Fu Hustle, Police Story, Ip Man. I mean there are examples of Hong Kong films that are slow burn human dramas, like Chungking Express and Eat Drink Man Woman, and successful American action films like Diehard, but I think its clear that Hollywood film didn't start out with action movies, and Hong Kong film didn't start out with slow burn dramas, but adopted these genres afterwards; you could even claim that successful Hong Kong films like the Bruce Lee films of the 70s fueled the American appetite for action in the 80s, which was the most prominent era for that genre in the US.
As a corollary to this, it becomes clear that the Korean and Japanese film making industries are not as culturally distinct from Hollywood as Honk Kong film making is. For Korean film, the reason is obvious: Koreatown in Los Angeles is right next to Hollywood, in some respects is a part of Hollywood, and there are deep ties now between the Korean and American film making industries for that reason, and Korean-Americans have an overly high degree of representation in American media, and Korean productions often come to America to shoot (think of the end of Squid Games: it's almost certainly the case that they shot in LA because a producer has a cousin or something that works in Hollywood).
Police Story and Chan's other 80s movies are the rare genuinely "all ages" entertainment (the only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is Spongebob).
They're good for kids because they are funny and full of action without being grim or dark. They're easy to follow, even for young kids, because of the lack of shaky cam and fast cuts.
They're good for adults because of all the crazy choreography and stunts.
Police Story is definitely my favorite!
I think it's a real stretch to call Police Story a dark movie, unless you mean the weird remake they did more recently.
yup, reading this comment I couldn't stop thinking about Rumble in the Bronx. Police Story and a bunch of other more obscure HK movies are pretty dark as well.
I agree with the article that even with Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon, Western audiences really haven't seen the full Jackie Chan palette of tricks and stunts. Some of the stuff he did in movies like Police Story, Armor of God and Drunken Master is amazing. Supercop (Police Story 3, per Wikipedia) has some of the most astonishing stunt work I've ever seen, and Michelle Yeoh matches him stunt for stunt.