Police Story 3: Supercop

This is a great film! Just last night I watched one of his not-so-great films and felt I needed to watch something that fits him, so I chose Supercop. I've forgotten how great it is!

Unlike most Jackie Chan movies, this one has a nice plot that is easy to understand and characters that you can easily take a liking to. The music isn't bad in some spots and the storyline is great. Let's not forget the action scenes, which are some of Chan's best (not his VERY best, but good nonetheless)!

I really recommend this movie to all Chan fans out there.

After the dissapointing Police Story 2, Jackie steps off the director chair and let's Stanley Tong do the job. This entry in the series tones down the acrobatic fights trademarked by Chan, focusing more in vehicle chases, shoot-outs and regular (but well coreographed of course) hand to hand fights, and instead of Ka Kui running around Hong Kong, he travels from country to country while infiltrating a gang of drug dealers. Funnily enough this feels more of a natural sequel to the original than the jarring Police Story 2. The addition of Michelle Yeoh's Capt Yang brings a lot of freshness and contrast to Chan's Ka Kui wacky and hot-blooded persona, and steals the show for the most part. The only downside is that most of the secondary characters from the previous movies are either ditched or have just small roles. Still, you can go wrong with this one.

Dear Stupid American Dubbers:

I am quite frankly sick and tired of you butchering quite possibly every single film from overseas. Your inability to successfully even mildly recreate the experience as if it were in its native tongue continues to dazzle me. Even the grandest of grand films from around the world become less bearable to watch thanks to the pitiful, gut-wrenching dubbing. To further your skills in watering down all sorts of movies, you even disallow the ability for some movies to make it to the United States with a mere addition of subtitles. Is it really that hard to just ship the film with their native language and the translation on the bottom of the screen? Really? Here is a list of things you should avoid when dubbing a movie from any non-English-speaking country:

1) Do not re-edit the film. The movie is 108 minutes long because the makers wanted it to be that way. Do not chop any "unnecessary" scenes

2) Do not remove scenes that actually further explains the plot. That is stupid. Very stupid

3) Do not attempt to add any humor into the movie. Your job is to only translate—not translate and have a shot at stand-up comedy.

4) Do not add or change the soundtrack. You stupid imbeciles, why on earth is there hip-hop music in a Jackie Chan film? That's like throwing in a performance of Swan Lake during one of the intermissions in a hockey game.

5) Do not fix the sound effects. Why are you fixing the sound effects!!?!?

6) Why are we not using Chinese-Americans to help dub Chinese films!?!??

7) Stop. Changing. The. Storyline. You. Amateurs. You. Make. Me. Want. To. Throw. Something. Heavy.

8) Just don't dub the film. As a matter of fact, don't even follow these rules, because that would mean you are trying to dub. Don't do it, just allow the movie (in its entirety) to arrive here in the United States, and put it the reliable subtitles on the bottom. Please and thank you.

Despite Supercop being quite possibly the 38539th film to be ruined because of American dubbing, it remains an enjoyable film, and one that's quite different from the usual Chan fare. The film is about (after reading Wikipedia and IMDb because the dubbing sure messed that up) Chan going undercover with a beautiful agent (Michelle Yeoh) to track down a drug king.

The action is very intense, rougher than the usual Chan material; so if you can adjust your tastes, you'll be in for a wild ride. While the usual amount of well-choreographed fights are replaced by heavy action set pieces, the final half an hour will leave you absolutely breathless. If you are disappointed in the first 60 minutes, stick around for the last leg, when you'll see unbelievable stunt after unbelievable stunt. Jackie Chan's female version performs her best work here, as Yeoh combines grittiness with a hintage of sexuality that's very subtle but all-so-present.

Bottom Line: Supercop is not the best Jackie Chan work, but it still entertains and still will blow you away with some of the set pieces and amazing stuntwork involved. The typical Jackie Chan humor is replaced with intense and crazy action that extends from brutal hand-to-hand combat to guns and missiles all over the place. With that being said, the dubbing will hamper the quality of the film a lot, no matter how hard you try to avoid it. Maybe in the future we can figure out how to successfully translate movies in a way that can make everybody happy; but in the meantime we have to deal with disgusting hip-hop, terrible re-editing, bad voice work acting, and an all-around aura of obviousness that the translators didn't have a clue on what the Chinese filmmakers and Jackie Chan were trying to achieve with this film.

P.S. Stop dubbing movies. Please. Just subtitle them. Please.

Jackie Chan is the "Supercop" of the title in Stanley Tong's martial arts caper. Forget about the plot and just sit back and enjoy the spectacular stunts, broad comedy, (it's even funnier in this dubbed version), and first rate action sequences including an absolutely terrific climatic chase scene involving a train, a helicopter and a rope ladder between the two while the redoubtable Michelle Yeoh proves to be every bit Chan's equal when the chips are down. Not a Chan classic perhaps but hugely entertaining nevertheless.

I've seen a lot of Jackie Chan films and its rare to find gem in the many jewels in the films he's made. There are real drama films like Crime Story, or the frentic action in the original police story, there's the three-brother action in Project A, there's the frenctic kung-fu in Drunken Master 2, and then there's this gem.

This is certainly the best in the police story series, the action is fantastic, the humor brilliant, the story well put together. The duo of Michelle Kahn (Yeoh) and Chan is amazing, and Yeoh almost steals the show in her own right - her persona and her instance to do her own stunts (like Chan) makes her a marvel to watch - this is why she is so damn good in Tomorrow Never Dies, but its a shame the director of TND never captured her in the same way Stanley Tong does!

Chan maybe getting older, and its getting harder and harder for him to surpass his best. In that respect, this is possibly the last, best action film we'll get to see. I enjoyed it, and I'm sure most chan fans will enjoy it too.

My Rating: 9/10.