Project S

Although not as good as the first, this film still contains plenty of action. The action is more shooting/explosions than martial arts though. About a bunch of terrorists and good guys kicking the crap out of them. Rated R: for Violence.

After helping thwart a major hostage situation, "Jessica Yang" (Michelle Yeoh) is sent to Hong Kong to assist in a police matter there. As it so happens her fiancé, "David Chang" (Rongguang Yu) has just recently moved there because he supposedly wants to stabilize his financial situation prior to marrying her. While this may be true he also plans on robbing a large bank there with some help from an American criminal named "Roger Davidson" (Alain Guernier). What neither of them realize is that their paths are about to cross again in an unexpected way. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this film is an off-shoot of the "Police Story" series (featuring Jackie Chan as "Inspector Chan Ka Kui") and essentially follows "Police Story 3-Supercop". Yet, while Jackie Chan does have a rather brief (and bizarre) scene here it focuses almost exclusively on Michelle Yeoh. That being said it lacks the peculiar mixture of comedy and charisma that only Jackie Chan can give to a film. That's not to say that this film is necessarily bad, it's just that it doesn't have the same degree of excitement as any of the "Police Story" movies. Accordingly, I rate it as just average.

This is a sequel to Supercop, but, Michelle Yeoh in the lead role. Though she is amazing, the film lacks the charm of Jackie Chan and makes this movie odd one out from the Police Story film series. To make things worse, Jackie Chan makes an unpleasant cameo in the untimely comedy, that makes no sense at all. Obviously, there are Thrilling action sequences to watch.

Depending on your whereabouts in the world, this film may go under any one of the following titles: Supercop 2 (USA), Once a Cop, Police Story 3 Part 2, Police Story 4: Project S, Police Story V, Project S (UK), Supercop (also UK). Whatever the title, do not be fooled into thinking that this is a Jackie Chan film; yes, he does appear in the movie, but only briefly and in a scene that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film.

Michelle Yeoh, however, plays the same character as she did in Police Story 3 (which was known as Supercop in the US and did star JC—are you keeping up?), a hard-as-nails mainland Chinese cop named Yang. She is called to Hong Kong to lend her expertise and assist in the apprehension of a gang of Chinese criminals who are pulling heists right left and centre and peeing-off the local cops.

The police operations are going swimmingly until Yang recognises one of the criminals as Cheng Feng, her boyfriend from China who left for HK to find his fortune, and the two become reacquainted under somewhat difficult circumstances.

With a decidedly routine plot, Project S needed to be something special in the action department in order to compensate, but despite some cracking fight action towards the end, there is far too much quiet time spent between bouts. The action is also geared towards gun-play rather than martial arts, so those expecting a full on fight-fest will be disappointed. That is not to say that Yeoh and co-stars don't display some wonderful skills from time to time; the high kicking action is pretty good when it happens—it just doesn't happen often enough.

The final half an hour, which has the gang attempt a daring bank robbery, offers the best dose of action, with Yang going up against a foe twice her size (and kicking ass, of course!).

Director Stanley Tong and star Michelle Yeoh have both made far better films than this, but if your expectations are not set too high, you may find Project S a reasonable way to spend your time (although 105 minutes was a tad too long for me!).

With a crime spree occurring across Hong Kong, and all the crimes traced to the work of one major crime syndicate, the police look to focus their resources. Having recently proved how tough and resourceful she is, Officer Hua Yang is sent to help a couple of detectives. It becomes immediately evident that the group is a lot more organised than they expected but Hua shakes off her adviser role and takes direct action – but when she discovers that the leader of the group is none other than one Ah Fung, Hua's old boyfriend.

On the basis of the wonderful Michelle Yeoh being in it, I decided to give this film a go to see if it was any good. From the very start I was amused to see how cheap it looked, although it may have aged a little bit as well. As with all these type of films, plot usually comes second to the action and here is no different. The story is not that well delivered and I found myself with too many characters to care about and too little logic in the plot. It did jump around a bit and it relied too heavily on the former relationship between Jessica and Ah – but it never bothered to really make us care about either of them as real people or get emotionally involved with them as was necessary if this method was to work. Sadly it didn't work and the film was quite unengaging for the most part.

Of course with good action scenes this shouldn't matter too much, but it doesn't do anything that special on the action front. This is not to suggest it is no good, because the gun play and various fights are reasonably good, it is just that they don't really do anything special and they do lack a certain amount of style. The fights do feel like they were done on a budget and, like the rest of the film, they did lack imagination and effort. The cast didn't do anything that good but in fairness my version was badly dubbed so it is hard to tell. Yeoh is a great actress who I have seen been playful, exciting, sensitive and tragic in many films but here she has nothing to do although one or two of her fight scenes hint at her ability. I never really got into the characters played by Sui-Wong, Yu and Chau as they didn't make much of an impression, although I thought that Wei was good. Bill Tung is there in a small role and does his usual stuff but were they really so desperate to attract an audience that they had to make Jackie Chan demean himself in an unfunny drag cameo?

Overall this is an average film at best. The presence of one or two famous names suggests that it will be better than average but in reality it is all a bit workmanlike and lacking effort. The plot relies on the characters being developed and, when they're not, it means that it isn't very engaging as a story. The action is OK but nothing special and I never went 'wow' or anything like that. The script is average and the performances (dubbed or not) didn't really do anything to improve on the situation – Yeoh in particular was disappointingly bland for large sections.