A Hong Kong detective teams up with his female Red Chinese counterpart to stop a Chinese drug czar.
Growing up as a kid in Dublin, Ireland, in the ’70s and ’80s, there was never much for us to do, so my friends and I would watch VHS tapes of our three favorite martial artists; Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Chuck Norris, and then fight each other with our newly-gained kung-fu techniques. While all three were great to watch, at the time, I would have picked Bruce Lee as my favorite martial artist, but Jackie Chan always seemed to edge him out, simply because he had made more movies and he always did his own stunts, something my friends and I took very seriously. After all, where do you think we got the idea to hang out of the back of freight trains and coal trucks? Yup, that’s right, one Mr. Jackie Chan.
In “Police Story 3: Supercop,” Chan plays Inspector Kevin Chan, the supercop of the Hong Kong Police Force, because of his exceptional martial arts skills. He is sent to the city of Guangzhou, in southern China, to team up with Interpol Inspector Jessica Yang (Michelle Yeoh) to help a Chinese drug czar, Khun Chaibat (Kenneth Tsang), escape from prison, with the intent of gaining his trust and infiltrating his organization. Naturally, they are both reluctant to ally as they each feel they can accomplish the mission alone, but their superiors insist, and they join forces. When things don’t go as planned, Kevin and Jessica must put their differences aside and work together to take down Chaibat’s organization.
The one element of many of Jackie Chan’s movies I always had an issue with was his lack of seriousness. Granted, he made many films where he was somber and no-nonsense, but many of his earlier movies were quite the opposite. While the storyline for “Police Story 3: Supercop” was no laughing matter, as it dealt with drug lords, murder, and betrayal, Chan infused it with plenty of humorous action set-pieces and dialogue. I know Chan made a name for himself starring in over-the-top action films, and I’ve lost count of the number of times he almost died performing his own stunts, but now and again, I wished he would have kept the earnestness many of his movies, especially this one, deserved.
There is a time and place for laughs and physical humor but also gravitas, and I feel “Police Story 3: Supercop” could have benefitted from a little more serious-mindedness. I love the “Rush Hour” series, plus a bevy of his other terrific action-comedies; “Project A,” “Armour of God,” “Project A Part II,” and “Armour of God II: Operation Condor,” to name but a few, but I have also enjoyed his roles where he is sterner and more pragmatic; “The Protector,” “Crime Story,” and “The Foreigner.” Watching Chan and Yeoh together onscreen is fantastic, especially their contrasting fighting techniques, and the film is filled with over-the-top stunts.
After appearing in “The Cannonball Run” with big-name actors such as Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Farrah Fawcett, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr., he was impressed with the outtakes director Hal Needham showed at the closing credits, and it inspired him to do the same with his own movies. When his films end, you get to see all the crazy stunts performed throughout the movie, not just his own, but that of the other actors who starred in it too. And you get to see stunts that went wrong, including one that almost killed Chan on the set of his 1986 action flick, “Armour of God,” where he fell over 15 feet from a tree branch and cracked his skull open, forcing a piece of bone up into his brain.
“Police Story 3: Supercop” looks stunning in 4K, and it features two versions: the original theatrical Hong Kong Version, which is approximately 97 minutes long, and the U.S. Version, titled “Supercop,” which is approximately 91 minutes long. It is presented in the aspect ratio of 2.35:1, encoded with MPEG-4, and granted a 1080p transfer.
Now available on a 4K Ultra HD™ 2-Disc Special Edition
