New Police Story (the fifth in Jackie Chan's series of Police Story movies) is a pretty slickly-made film: it has a sensible (if not particularly intelligent) story, decent production values, a handful of swell action scenes, and is directed reasonably well. That said, the movie isn't really anything to get excited about; even for a brainless action flick, New Police Story is a pretty hollow film, filled with one-dimensional characters and situations. Even worse, it has Daniel Wu and Nicholas Tse -- the two most annoying pretty boys in China this side of Boy'z and Edison Chen -- in it, in leading roles. Ack! Their idiotic performances bring the movie down more than a couple notches.





Wing (Jackie Chan), Hong Kong's resident super-cop, is the film's hero. We first meet him at a bar, drinking himself into oblivion; after he passes out in an alley, the film takes us back a year to show how us he came to be in this sorry state. Turns out a group of rich twentysomething bank robbers (they gave off a kind of Eurotrash vibe, so I mentally began referring to them as Asiotrash), led by Joe Kwan (played by the execrable Daniel Wu), managed to kill off his entire squad (including his soon-to-be-brother-in-law) after leading them into a booby-trapped building. Wing, the only survivor, is devastated, in large part because the Asiotrash kids (self-professed "cop haters") forced him to play a series of rigged games for their lives, and he ended up losing the majority of them. He takes a year off following the incident, stops seeing his girlfriend, and becomes a boozehound.

Enter Fung (Nicholas Tse). Fung, who claims to be his new partner, slowly brings Wing out of his depression: he hooks him back up with his girlfriend and gets him on the case of the bank robbers again. With the help of Sa Sa (Charlene Choi), a cute female officer in charge of the computer crimes division, the two eventually track down a few members of Joe's gang and get the ball rolling again. Numerous wild, improbable crimefighting techniques, obviously, are employed during the course of their investigation (this is a Jackie Chan movie, after all); probably the most ridiculous involves Wing's reckless jump off of a skyscraper using only a pair of handcuffs and a rope to slow his descent. Dangerous antics of this nature earn Wing high praise from Fung, who screams out "that's my maaaan!" (in ghettoized English) every time he lands safely on his feet. Makes you want to strangle him.

Anyway, the Asiotrash kids eventually target Wing's girlfriend, get him and Fung locked up, and proceed to rob another bank; this leads to a final showdown and shootout (everyone in the movie, including the cops, have tremendously bad aim, of course; as in most action flicks, people only get shot if their getting shot is somehow relevant to the plot) in, and finally on top of, the Hong Kong Convention Center.





Not bad, as it goes, but the film is a rife with little annoyances: perhaps worried that the movie wasn't meeting its quota of gag-inducing pretty boys, Kenny Kwan of the putrid pop group Boy'z was given a cameo. Lapses into English by the younger stars are frequent, and irritating, as they tend to speak it with a truly terrifying hip-hop accent. Worst of all, though, are the Asiotrash kids, who make for ridiculous villians; I never came close to being convinced that these fruity maroons were capable of outthinking even the dumbest of Hong Kong cops (even if Joe, their esteemed leader, did indeed "study in America"). I'm supposed to believe that Daniel Wu is a match for Jackie Chan? Yeah, right.

Indeed, the Asiotrash kids pretty much ruin the movie. This is a darker film than any of the other Police Story movies, which tended to focus on comic action; as such, it deserved a better, more realistic villian. Thrill-killers are all well and good, but by definition their motives are shallow. A sinister, similarly ruthless killer, one with an agenda and perhaps with a very personal vendetta against Wing, would have made for a much more serious and sophisticated adversary than a bunch of bank robbing loser kids out for a few laughs.

Moreover, juxtaposing Wing's pathos at losing the men under his command with a bunch of silly stuntwork and action scenes probably wasn't the best idea in the world; it's possible the movie was doomed to feel a little erratic from the get-go. At any rate, New Police Story isn't awful, and it does have a few good qualities, but there's nothing too brilliant or unique about it. Your own mileage may vary, especially if you've got a higher tolerance for Hong Kong pretty boys than I do.

---

back to trenchman.com