I remember renting this when it first came out but the tape was messed up, so I couldn’t watch past the first five minutes. The store didn’t have another copy, so I never got around to checking it out. Till now.
Jackie Chan is a detective trying to foil the kidnapping of a crooked businessman. He soon becomes suspicious of the detective he’s been partnered with. Before long, he’s convinced the potentially crooked cop is the mastermind behind the abduction.
Directed by Kirk Wong, Crime Story is definitely an outlier in Chan’s filmography. I do find it interesting that one of the things that made Chan balk at becoming an action star in America during his brief stint in Hollywood in the ‘80s was his resistance to being groomed as a serious action hero, preferring to keep his jovial comical persona that he perfected in his Hong Kong movies. However, Crime Story finds him in Hong Kong playing the kind of role he wasn’t keen on in America. It’s a tough, mean, and sometimes violent movie; a real departure for Jackie to be sure.
That’s not to say the stunt work isn’t great. (There’s an impressive scene during a car chase where Chan drives a car down a steep incline.) It’s just that it relies heavily on car chases and shootouts rather than the usual comedic hand-to-hand fighting and stunts we normally associate with Jackie. We still get an okay fight scene atop some bamboo scaffolding and a snappy one on one fight between Chan and a suspect in the police station though.
The results are fine. It’s watchable. The pacing is decent and the action is strong enough to give it a marginal recommendation. (Lots of stuff goes boom in the finale.) It’s just that if you’re looking for the heart, inventiveness, humor, and frankly, fun that made Chan a legend, you won’t find it here.
Wong later came to America and directed Mark Wahlberg in The Big Hit (which incidentally felt more like a Chan movie than this one).
AKA: Hard to Die. AKA: New Police Story. AKA: Police Dragon. AKA: Serious Crimes Squad.
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