Police Story 3: Super Cop

Police Story 3: Super Cop (Ging Chaat Goo Si Ill: Chiu Kup Ging Chaat) (1992)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: Stanley Tong

Starring: Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung, Kenneth Tsang, Wah Yuen

From: Golden Harvest

Stewed civet and turtle penis!

To be brief, in a matter of hours this will be gone from the Criterion Channel so this was THE priority for last night. In the past I’ve reviewed the first two Police Story films and enjoyed both. Adding Michelle Yeoh to the mix made me happy to check this out in full instead of the original United States version put out by by individual I’ll refer to as Voldemort.

Chan is back as Chan Ka-Kui; this time he has to go undercover in Mainland China to try and bring down a drug kingpin known as Big Brother; this includes busting a henchman out of prison. Sounds stock standard, but in execution this is a lot of fun. It’s Hong Kong so there’s some comedy and not all of it landed perfectly with me; be that as it may, this has what you want if you enjoy the Hong Kong action pictures from this time. It certainly delivers on both the story and the action beats. Chan and Yeoh are as incredible as you’d expect; if only once again Maggie Cheung had more to do…

Jackie Chan the human being I don’t love now; just look at how he treats his children. Jackie Chan the action star who provides laughs along with the martial arts and literally death-defying stunts: I can still love. Villains who are pretty loathsome, Lo Lieh for a bit, gunplay & explosions that are present along with the martial arts, a soundtrack that at times reminded me of Tangerine Dream, time spent in Malaysia, and a tremendous final 20 minutes that is incredible in terms of action that continues to escalate, where no one being maimed or killed during filming was purely the luck of fools—the clips shown during the end credits prove that.

The rest of 2023, I’ll have to check out at least one more Hong Kong action picture of this vintage.