Police Story (1985)

Introduces Extreme Martial Arts

Police Story 1The Hong Kong action comedy film Police Story (1985) is written and directed by Jackie Chan, who also stars in the film with Maggie Cheung and Brigitte Lin. It is the first of the Police Story series featuring Jackie Chan as a Hong Kong police detective named “Kevin” Ka-Kui Chan. Chan began work on the film after a disappointing experience working with the director James Glickenhaus on The Protector (1985), which was suppose to be the film that would allow Jackie to gain entry into the American film market.

In Police Story (1985), Kevin Chan (Jackie Chan) is a Hong-Kong cop, who scores his first big hit by virtually single-handedly capturing and arresting a big drug-lord. Of course, the drug-lord isn’t too happy about this, and frames Kevin with the murder of another cop (who happened to be on the take). Kevin has to clear his name, whilst keeping himself from getting killed or arrested, and keeping his girlfriend from leaving him. Written by Yaron .

Note: This was one of Jackie Chan’s movies that broke away from the typical period-piece martial arts films. In it, the characters do not practice traditional kung fu, but they become extreme athletics (XMA style). This movie  is an example of the wu da pian genre. Fight films that use martial arts, and most martial arts movies that followed it, use this genre and they take martial arts stunt work to a new level, incorporating western style boxing with karate type moves and they don’t use doubles or wires.