Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Jackie Chan’s Police Force ***** The standard by which at movie stuntmen should be judged.


I have read that there are several versions of this flick, some even with different names than Police Force.  Mine is from 1996, Parade Video #568.  It is a video cassette tape, and that is one of the reasons it has probably lasted this long.
One reason that some people might criticize this one is that it is dubbed.  You see the mouths of the actors moving, but they words you hear coming out of the television set are entirely different.  I actually think that is somewhat humorous to see.  I could probably get tired of it if every movie was like that, but having a few poorly dubbed movies from China is actually fairly cool.
Jackie Chan wasn’t kidding when he has repeatedly said this effort is his best.  He has a few movies out where he has played the role of a police officer, and this one, the first, is the best.  The plot is fairly good, but you won’t see better stunts anywhere.  As far as I know, it wasn’t released in theaters in America.
The secret to Jackie Chan’s work is that the camera doesn’t switch to a different angle when it is time to do a stunt, and his stunts rely only minimally on the use of guns.  There was actually a study done that people rated the action in Chan’s movies to be superior because it is essentially real.  The camera hardly ever goes for a different angle.  If you watch this movie, and are a fan of action movies, pop in something with Arnold or some other America action hero and you will see what I am talking about with respect to the camera.  As soon as the action is getting good, the camera in cheesy action movies switches angles, but that hardly ever happens in a Jackie Chan movie.

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