Police Story and Police Story 2 are returning to U.S. theaters with a brand new 4k restoration. Read the official details from Janus Films below:
The jaw-dropping set pieces fly fast and furious in Jackie Chan’s breathtakingly inventive martial-arts comedy, a smash hit that made him a worldwide icon of daredevil action spectacle. The director/star/one-man stunt machine plays Ka-Kui, a Hong Kong police inspector who goes rogue to bring down a drug kingpin and protect the case’s star witness (Chinese cinema legend Brigitte Lin) from retribution. Packed wall-to-wall with charmingly goofball slapstick and astoundingly acrobatic fight choreography—including an epic shopping-mall melee of flying fists and shattered glass—Police Story set a new standard for rock-’em-sock-’em mayhem that would influence a generation of filmmakers from Hong Kong to Hollywood.
Jackie Chan followed up the massive success of Police Story with an even bigger box-office hit. Having been demoted to a lowly traffic cop for his, ahem, unorthodox policing methods, Chan’s go-it-alone officer Ka-Kui quits the force in protest. But it isn’t long before he’s back in action, racing the clock to stop a band of serial bombers and win back his much-put-upon girlfriend May (the phenomenal Maggie Cheung, reprising her star-making role). Boasting epic explosions, an awesomely 1980s electro soundtrack, and a showstopping finale—which turns an abandoned warehouse into a life-size pinball machine of cascading oil drums, collapsing scaffolds, and shooting fireworks—Police Story 2 confirmed Chan’s status as a performer of unparalleled grace and daring.
Police Story and Police Story 2 will be screening in weeklong engagements at the Alamo Drafthouse (Downtown Brooklyn), the Alamo New Mission (San Francisco), and the Music Box (Chicago) beginning Feb. 1, as well as at the Los Angeles NuArt (March 8-14), the Coolidge Corner Cinema (Boston, Feb. 1-2), Landmark’s Ken (San Dieg, Feb 1-2), the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz (Austin, Feb 2-3), the Alamo Drafthouse Yonkers (Feb. 4), the Alamo Drafthouse Littleton (Denver, Feb 6), SIFF Cinema (Seattle, Feb 8), the Hollywood (Portland, Feb. 16-23), the Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra (Katy, Feb. 19), the Charles (Baltimore, Feb. 28), and the DIA (Detroit, May 26-28). (via Polygon)
Watch the official re-release Trailer from Janus below:
I concur with this article. Everyone who said Tony Jaa or Iko Uwais was the next Jackie Chan hasn't seen these. Police Story 1 & 2 are untouchable action epics. This is Jackie and his stunt team at the epitome of their powers.
Jackie Chan as Chan Ka-Kui. Fortune Star/Janus Films
MOVIES Jackie Chan’s Police Story movies remain among the best action films of all time
Police Story and Police Story 2 return to theaters with a brand new 4k restoration
By Karen Han@karenyhan Dec 27, 2018, 2:00pm EST
When it comes to death-defying stunt work, if anyone could give Tom Cruise a run — or a punch, kick, leap, or unfathomable fall — for his money, it’s Jackie Chan.
For proof, look no further than the Police Story series, the first two installments of which were recently restored in 4K by Fortune Star at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in anticipation of a Criterion Collection release, with the announcement of a full theatrical run, a brand new trailer, and poster debuting exclusively on Polygon. Directed by and starring Chan, as hot-shot Hong Kong police officer Chan Ka-Kui, Police Story (1985) and Police Story 2 (1988) contain some of the most audacious stunts ever seen, and are long overdue to be seen in theaters again.
In his 1998 autobiography I Am Jackie Chan, Chan cites Police Story as his best work (at least in terms of action and stunts). The film’s first major set piece — in which an entire shanty town is destroyed — more than earns that particular distinction. Police Story only escalates from there, its gangland storyline growing increasingly incidental (but no less entertaining), acting mostly as impetus to get from one action scene to the next. The final fight and chase occur just five minutes out from the end of the movie — in other words, the action’s the thing.
To wit, 1988’s Police Story 2 begins with what is essentially a greatest hits montage, cutting together the flashiest parts of its predecessor before diving into the new action. It’s not every film that can pull that off without either setting itself up for failure or coming across as unbearably cheesy, but Chan’s films manage it — Police Story’s big set piece is even played three times in succession, as a sort of built-in showcase for the work.
As the value placed on practical stunts and effects increases — see: the fervor over Cruise’s ankle-breaking commitment to reality in Mission: Impossible — Fallout — it feels like high time to revisit Chan’s old (relatively speaking) work. The appeal therein is obvious: the realer a stunt is, the realer it will look on screen, and the more latitude a viewer will have to believe that the performers, putting life and limb on the line, will literally defy death while escaping an explosion, or clinging to the side of a moving bus.
It’s a subtext that the Police Story movies shift into explicit text as both Police Story and Police Story 2 play their credits over a series of outtakes. Some are humorous, as when props fail to work properly, but the majority of them showcase stunts gone wrong, as well as their aftermath, with Chan or other actors sitting patiently as bloody wounds are inspected and bandaged up. In a few, actors are even carried, prone, from the set. The outtakes little shocking to watch, not least because such injuries would likely become their own news item in today’s day and age — and they’re pure mana for anyone weaned on the Rush Hour series, or Chan’s later Hollywood work.
Jackie Chan in Police Story. Fortune Star/Janus Films
Ka-Kui’s commitment to foiling criminals never leads to any particularly shocking revelations, but the scenes still zip along with verve thanks to the comedic instincts of the casts that Chan has assembled, turning even the most rote of confrontations into exercises in slapstick. Even when the scenes don’t break down into fights using anything and everything that’s within arm’s reach (a key sequence in Police Story 2 has Chan and company spinning around jungle gym sets), they’re dynamic. And besides, though the plot may be predictable (Police Story 2 sees Ka-Kui demoted, and you only get one guess as to how long that lasts), the action never is.
A brand new poster and trailer accompany the films’ restoration and theatrical run. Fortune Star/Janus Films
Chan’s work also crosses into a sublime, Buster Keaton-like territory, as it’s not just a sense of veritas when it comes to stunts that set Police Story and Police Story 2 apart. His impeccable sense for how to stage a sequence extends to simple conversations, and the films are built around what’s possible in terms of action rather than filling in action to support the plot. One of the best scenes in Police Story has Ka-Kui juggling three phone calls at once, spinning in an office chair as he attempts to keep the cords untangled and his head on straight. There’s an effortless grace to the way he pulls it off that’s just as thrilling to watch as the film’s denouement.
Chan is also a literalist when it comes to suffering for one’s art. The final big stunt in Police Story, in which Ka-Kui slides down a several-story chandelier and crashes through several panes of glass (earning the sequence the nickname “Glass Story” amongst the crew), left Chan with second-degree burns as well as a back injury and a dislocated pelvis, but the end of the shot still sees him hopping back to his feet to continue the chase.
The scene serves a distillation of Chan’s superstardom. The actor never lies to his audience, in part because he’s more than just the films’ star. Chan is the heart and brain of the Police Story films, and the lengths he goes to in order to impress and entertain extend beyond what we see on screen; that he’s also charismatic, can flip between comedy and drama, and can pull off every stunt demanded of him, even if it may take a few tries, makes him a rarity, and the Police Story films the pinnacle of his career.
Police Story and Police Story 2 will be screening in weeklong engagements at the Alamo Drafthouse (Downtown Brooklyn), the Alamo New Mission (San Francisco), and the Music Box (Chicago) beginning Feb. 1, as well as at the Los Angeles NuArt (March 8-14), the Coolidge Corner Cinema (Boston, Feb. 1-2), Landmark’s Ken (San Dieg, Feb 1-2), the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz (Austin, Feb 2-3), the Alamo Drafthouse Yonkers (Feb. 4), the Alamo Drafthouse Littleton (Denver, Feb 6), SIFF Cinema (Seattle, Feb 8), the Hollywood (Portland, Feb. 16-23), the Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra (Katy, Feb. 19), the Charles (Baltimore, Feb. 28), and the DIA (Detroit, May 26-28).
My birthday is in February. This is how I plan to celebrate it.
Jackie Chan, who performed all of his own stunts, uses an umbrella to latch on to the outside of a moving bus in “Police Story.”Credit CreditJanus Films
By J. Hoberman
Jan. 29, 2019
The Asian action star Jackie Chan has been often compared to Buster Keaton (no one takes a fall better) and sometimes to Douglas Fairbanks (whose acrobatic grace he equals in vaulting over a wall). But I’m always fascinated by his moves: Chan is the Fred Astaire of outrageous mayhem.
A child who, starting at age 7, attended an academy for Chinese opera and martial arts in his native Hong Kong, Chan was an international star well before he came to the attention of most American moviegoers. His breakthrough film, “Police Story” (1985), and its inevitable first sequel, “Police Story II” (1988), both digitally restored, are playing together at the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn.
A small part alongside Burt Reynolds in “The Cannonball Run” (1981) failed to ignite Chan’s career in the United States. Until “Police Story” was included in the 1987 New York Film Festival, his New York fans often went to Chinatown’s movie houses to enjoy his comic windmill kick-box, karate-chop, tumble-out-of-a-third-story-window thing.
Jackie Chan and Maggie Cheung as his long-suffering girlfriend in “Police Story II.”Credit Janus Films
The incongruity of screening this violent slapstick at Lincoln Center was not lost on The New York Times critic Vincent Canby, who advised those who missed the festival shows that they could “catch up with more or less the same kind of thing on virtually any day of the week on 42d Street, where comic kung fu movies are treated not as cinematic epiphanies but as unpretentious comedies for people whose minds, like their feet, wander when not nailed to the floor.”
Indeed, “Police Story” — which Chan directed as well as starred in as a diligent but absent-minded cop — would be little more than a bang-bang procedural were it not for a number of impossibly kinetic set pieces. The scene in which Chan, who did all of his own stunts, employs the handle of an umbrella to hang on to a moving bus is easier to describe than the gyrations he uses to confound six bad guys armed with clubs or ride a large shopping mall chandelier down to the ground. The sound of broken glass is Chan’s theme song. His directorial stunts are epitomized by a choreographed sequence that destroys an entire hillside shantytown.
“Police Story” is largely the sum of its action scenes although it’s also enjoyable to watch the villains wield cellphones the size of cinder blocks, or see the very young Maggie Cheung as Chan’s long-suffering girlfriend. (Brigitte Lin, another leading Hong Kong star, is also in the movie as the witness whom Chan’s police officer must protect.)
“Police Story II,” showing as a separate admission, appears never to have been reviewed in The Times. Production values are higher and the havoc quotient is lower, despite several elaborate explosions. The tiresome toilet humor is partly compensated for by some impressively orchestrated gags — involving chain reactions worthy of Rube Goldberg — and a fireworks display that brings down the abandoned factory where the final battle is staged.
The best part of a Chan production can be the humorous montage of outtakes that accompany the closing credits. As if to offset the diminished violence in “Police Story II,” the coda shows real injuries and actual blood.
Police Story and Police Story II
Opening Friday at Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn, 718-513-2547, drafthouse.com. Streaming on various platforms, including YouTube, Vudu and GooglePlay.
Unfortunately something came up for me and I won't be able to make it to SF this Friday.
Reply With Quote:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/62743784/PoliceStory_poster_flat.0.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13652130/29544id_019.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13652148/PoliceStory_poster.jpg)
