Project A 2

Project A 2 (A Gai Wak 2) (1987)

Runtime: 102 minutes

Directed by: Jackie Chan

Starring: Chan, Maggie Cheung, Rosamund Kwan, David Lam, Bill Tung

From:Golden Harvest

Recently I've realized that I haven't watched as much Jackie Chan as I really should; thus, viewing one of the four movies I have on Blu in a set from Echo Bridge was in order. Of course it's from Echo Bridge so that meant the quartet of films were all on one disc and it was only the Miramax dubs but that's what I had on hand. Remember the halcyon days of yore when our biggest complaints w/ Miramax was how they treated the foreign pictures they released in the United States?

In the past I've seen and reviewed Project A, which I really enjoyed. It is set in late 19th century Hong Kong and Chan played Sergeant Dragon Ma (not to be confused w/ the villainess from Super Inframan); in the first he was in the Marine Police and here, due to his heroics he is in charge of trying to clean up corruption in law enforcement. Besides that aspect having more resonance in 2020, a major plot point here is... unrest in Hong Kong against the government. That is a huge deal now in the film world as one of the (many) issues people have with the live-action Mulan is that its star is pro-Chinese government against the rebellions in the region. To avoid controversy, let me move on...

The plot is busy and perhaps there are a few too many characters-pirates, bad cops, pro-government forces, anti-government forces, etc.; at least it wasn't too difficult to follow. The original movie I do prefer when it comes to plot, characters (I missed Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao's presence) and even the action-which is still fine... the finale was at least impressive. If only there wouldn't have been a plot contrivance or two... at least unlike in Project A, Jackie did not fall head-first from a few stories up-although, there were still some brutal stunts.