Genre Guesstimation – Police Story (1985)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s genre has been chosen by David of Blueprint Review and we will be reviewing our favorite Hong Kong Martial Arts Movies.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of Nov by sending them to hkdave@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box! Great choice David!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Hong Kong Martial Arts Movies.…

“Don’t be a cop if you want to live to 100 ” – Supt. Raymond Li

Number of Times Seen – 1 (10 Nov 2019)

Brief Synopsis – A Hong Kong police detective is tasked with protecting a witness in a case against a crime boss but soon finds out that not at is as it seems.

My Take on it – To be honest, I’ve never been the biggest fan of foreign language martial arts films and was a bit concerned when David chose this genre since I have very little to no knowledge on this genre.

I then decided that this would be a great opportunity for me to try and experience some of the best films in this genre from a very fresh perspective since it would help broaden my movie watching horizons.

First up is the film that made Jackie Chan a star both in the Far East and in America.

This is a film that is quite fun to watch nd that has much to do with the way that Chan plays things out especially when dealing with death defying stunts for the characters.

These stunts add a much needed thrill to watching this story unfold.

Chan is able to prove with this film how great an actor and martial artist he is .

His presence is able to take a cookie cutter plot and make it even more interesting to watch.

The film’s plot may be pretty generic and it fails to find a way to distinguish itself by the story yet the action scenes make it more worthwhile to follow.

The biggest problem here though is the fact that Chan adds too much slapstick comedy to the story and that makes it so much more difficult to view everything that happens here from a more serious perspective.

The most enjoyable scene of this film is the one in the mall which makes it among the best of its kind especially given the unpredictable nature of the way things play out.

Bottom Line – Fun action movie that has some great stunts which add so much to the thrilling nature of it all. Chan proves with this film his acting and fighting abilities which helps the story to not feel as if it is just a regular carbon copy action film. The plot is fine, but is a bit too generic for this genre and fails to distinguish itself from a story perspective. Chan overuses the comedy parts of the film and that gives this film too much of a “light” nature which hurts things because it makes it harder to take everything going on from a more serious minded perspective. The mall scene is among the best of its kind and makes this film even more enjoyable to watch unfold due to the unpredictability of the characters and story. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Jackie Chan sustained burns on his hands during the pole slide scene in the mall. The Christmas tree lights were plugged into the wall instead of a low-voltage car battery. (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Not quite. Fun film that gets a lot right, but it’s hard to take this more seriously as a crime/action/thriller because its tone is much too light for its own good.

Rating – Globe Worthy (7/10)