Police Story : First Strike (Taiwan Version) DVD Region All

Being a Police Story movie it's not long before the plot needle's in the red and Chan is shuttling back and forth between Moscow, Hong Kong, the Ukraine and Australia trying to track down stolen plutonium for a boss (played by respected Russian actor, Yuri Batchov) who may or may not be the bad guy behind the plutonium-pilfering in the first place. Constantly getting lost, confused, humiliated and framed for murder you know that if Chan gets something nice in this movie (say, a spiffy suit) it's only so it can be taken away in the next reel (said suit torn to shreds by gigantic power lifter, Nathan Jones, performing here with a broken arm).

Speaking of clothes, as Jackie's gotten older his wardrobe's gotten weirder, and in First Strike it's reached a zenith. By the time the movie's over he will have worn a seal hat, a live koala bear, a Nehru jacket ensemble, Koala bear undies, a big shark costume, a waterproof pair of yellow overalls, and a strange stilt-walker's costume. The man's got more clothes than Madonna, and they're weirder than Madonna's, too.

This globe-trotting spy movie is directed by Stanley Tong (of Supercop and Rumble in the Bronx fame) who brought it in for $15 million with only 10 days of post-production. Rocketing down a mountain in an apocalyptic ski chase, crashing through the ice into subzero waters, balancing on the ledge of a hotel that looks to be about five miles high, crashing through the most kinetic ladder fight ever put on film, and climaxing in a twenty-minute underwater fight in an aquarium full of man-eating sharks every cent of this movie's budget is up on-screen making it the best James Bond movie James Bond never made. It's a far worthier spoof of the genre than the excruciating Casino Royale.

This is post-95 Jackie at his best.

by Grady Hendrix