Police Story III: Supercop (1992)

Police Story III: Supercop (1992)
aka: Supercop
Chinese Title: 警察故事III超級警察
Translation: Police Story III: Super Cop

Starring: Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, Kenneth Tsang Kong, Yuen Wah, Bill Tung Biu, Josephine Koo Mei-Wah, Kelvin Wong Siu, Phillip Chan Yan-Kin, Lo Lieh, Ailen Sit Chun-Wai, Ken Lo Wai-Kwong
Director: Stanley Tong
Action Director: Stanley Tong, Stanley Tong’s Stunt Group[1], Bruce Law

 

By the start of the summer of 1997, I had seen three Jackie Chan films. The first was Rumble in the Bronx, which I had missed in the theaters, but rented a couple of times after it came out on video. Not long after the first time I watched Rumble in the Bronx, my older brother and I rented Crime Story, which was released straight to video. Finally, it was around January of ’97 that my brother, his friends and I caught Jackie Chan’s First Strike (aka Police Story IV) at the dollar theater on a double bill with Beavis and Butthead Do America. I had missed watching Supercop in the theater and for whatever reason, hadn’t gotten around to watching it yet. My brother did buy the soundtrack, which featured Warren G and Adina Howard doing a hip-hop version of “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” and Tom Jones doing a Jackie-centric cover of “Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting.”

That summer changed everything. One Friday evening, my siblings were out enjoying their social lives while my Freshman-soon-to-be-Sophomore ass was just hanging out at home with mom. She took me to Blockbuster video on the corner of Pershing Ave. and Robinhood Dr., right behind San Joaquin Delta College. There, I rented both Supercop and Jackie Chan’s Police Force, better known as Police Story. I watched both of them that evening. The next day, which was my personal clothes shopping day with my mom, we took the movies back. Low and behold, there was a copy of Jackie Chan’s Police Force (featuring the original international dub) on sale at Blockbuster for 10 bucks. Yoink! While buying clothes in Sacramento, my mom and I stopped by Barnes & Noble at Arden Fair Mall, where I picked up Jackie Chan: Inside the Dragon by Clyde Gentry III. There was no turning back at this point: I was now a Hong Kong cinephile.

The movie would be set about four years after the events of Police Story II, although no mention is made of Kevin Chan (Jackie) saving Hong Kong from a bunch of mad bombers or bringing down a major drug dealer named Ku. The film opens with a bunch of high-level types from (presumably) Interpol and the Hong Kong police discussing Asia’s problems with drug smuggling, including anecdotes of carriers dying of overdoses while smuggling condoms filled with heroin in their stomachs. They discuss a “Supercop” initiative to have a Hong Kong cop collaborate with Mainland Chinese law enforcement to bring down one of the bigger drug dealers, a man named Chaibat (who’ll be played by The Replacement Killers’ Kenneth Tsang). For the record, this scene was cut from the American version, presumably to keep the pace breakneck.

Shortly afterward, Kevin Chan shows up at work to get his orders to patrol whatever park in Hong Kong his superiors think he’ll do the less damage at. It’s funny, Kevin Chan causes lots of property damage and he either gets demoted or some Mickey Mouse jobs in the most innocuous places. In the Lethal Weapon films, Briggs and Murtaugh do property damage and they get promoted to the rank of captain. Anyway, Chan overhears his Uncle Bill (Bill Tung, of the previous two Police Story films) arguing with Commissioner Chan (Phillip Chan, playing essentially the same sort of role he did in Bloodsport and Hard Boiled) about whether or not they should recommend Kevin for the Interpol assignment. This is intentional, so as to guarantee that Kevin’s mouth will be watered for some real police work, as opposed to patrolling some Podunk park somewhere in Hong Kong. The plan works, and soon Kevin is kissing his girlfriend, May (Maggie Cheung, of Project A 2 and Twin Dragons), goodbye and flying to China.

After meeting with the top brass of China’s military, Chan is introduced to his opposite number in China and (though he doesn’t know it yet) partner in the mission: Captain Yang Choo-Kheng[2]. That sly dog Kevin tries to put the moves on her, but her strict PRC discipline will allow none of that. In any case, their plan is to disguise Kevin as a local named Lin Fu Sheng (from Wuhan, no less) and have him assist a team of mercenaries in breaking one of Chaibat’s lieutenants, Panther (Yuen Wah of The Iceman Cometh and The Master), out of a prison labor camp. The plan is simple: while the mercenaries are rescuing Panther, Yang picks them off one by one with a sniper rifle while Kevin/Fu Sheng shows up at helps Panther. The two escape together and Kevin makes it into Panther’s good graces.

Panther has Kevin take him and his men to Yan Yu Village, where his alter-ego apparently hails from. There, they’ll lay low until it’s time to flee to Hong Kong. From a geographical point of view, this is interesting because Wuhan is located in the landlocked province of Hubei, in Central China. I’m guessing that they were somewhere in the Guangdong province, but for whatever reason, the people who made the English version just changed it some other random Chinese city. While at the village, which is apparently populated by undercover policemen, Kevin Chan/Fu Sheng meets his “family,” which includes his sister Hanna/Fan Hua (actually Captain Yang) and his mother (Uncle Bill in drag). There’s a funny bit where Kevin tells Panther that Hanna’s his wife, only for to show up and yell “Brother!”, making them look like inbred hicks.

While eating out that evening, some policemen who aren’t aware of the Interpol mission try to arrest Panther and his men, only for Yang to step in and beat the shit out of everyone. She also pretends to kill another policeman (who does know what’s going on), which is enough to win Panther’s trust—he takes her along with him so she won’t get executed for murder. Panther takes both Kevin and Yang to Hong Kong to meet Chaibat. From there, the mission will take the two from Hong Kong to the jungles of Thailand and from there, to the streets of Kuala Lampur, Malaysia.

Supercop is a pretty good example of the sway that Jackie Chan held over the Hong Kong and Pan-Asian film industry in the 1990s. After Armour of God 2: Operation Condor went way over budget and became the most expensive HK film up to that point, Golden Harvest wanted Chan to tone it down for the next few films. I’m guessing while a second Police Story sequel would have cost some money to make, it was expected that it would at least be a local production. That was probably the case, until stuntman-turned-choreographer-turned-director Stanley Tong got on board. With Tong’s Western filmmaking sensibilities and penchant for large-scale stunts, Supercop quickly became an international effort with scenes filmed on location in four different countries, with some of Jackie’s biggest stunts yet. Tong’s previous effort had been Stone Age Warriors, an action-adventure film set in New Guinea which put its lead actresses, Nina Li Chi and Elaine Lui, through the hell of falling down waterfalls, being attacked by Komodo dragons and being covered in scorpions. Although Chan has notoriously had problems in working with other directors, in Tong he found a kindred spirit: both men were downright insane.

In Clyde Gentry’s Jackie Chan: Inside the Dragon, the author comments that Supercop was mainly Tong’s child. As a result, the fighting itself is toned down—unlike the first two movies, there is no all-time classic set piece in this one—while the stuntwork is ratched up past 11. The international settings also give this film a James Bondian film, which influence would be further felt in the subsequent Police Story IV: First Strike. Supercop would also become known as the first Hong Kong film to be filmed in synch sound in decades: because of the Hong Kong and Taiwanese markets, filmmakers often found it easier film movies silently and the dub them into Cantonese or Mandarin for whatever market the film was being released in. Supercop was filmed in Cantonese (for the Hong Kong scenes), Mandarin (for the Mainland China scenes), and Malay/English for the scenes in Kuala Lampur.

Completing the trifecta of crazy action people is Michelle Yeoh, who had just gotten out of retirement after her failed marriage to movie producer Dickson Poon. Yeoh had met Stanley Tong on the set of her pre-marriage swan song, The Magnificent Warriors, when the latter was still cutting his teeth as a stuntman. The two apparently became good friends on set, so when the news came out that she was looking to get back into the business, Tong cast her in the role as the tough-as-nails Captain Yang. Yeoh has stated in interviews—see Top Fighter 2: Deadly China Dolls—that she likes the more physical action as opposed to the more flowery wire-fu of movies like Butterfly and Sword. In the end, she actually steals the show in terms of the fight scenes and performs two awesome stunts during the climax.

The action was choreographed by Stanley Tong and his crew. They were nominated for Best Action Choreography at the Hong Kong Film Awards the following year, but lost to Yuen Woo-Ping for Once Upon a Time in China 2. The fighting itself is well staged, but the fights are very short and to the point. There are a handful of them, however, which include Chan in a demonstration with a Mainland instructor (Sam Wong), some tussles with prison guards and local policemen, a short scuffle with Chaibat’s men, and a few moments of fisticuffs against the Malaysian authorities. The Thailand sequence is mainly gunplay and explosions, inspired more by 80s right-wing action movies (like Rambo: First Blood Part 2 and Predator) than Hong Kong cinema.

The finale in an unforgettable mix of fighting prowess and bonkers stuntwork. After Chan and Yeoh beat up the local authorities, Yeoh finds herself atop a moving van while Chan following behind in a sports car. Chaibat and his men are following both vehicles in a helicopter, blowing up all the cars around them with a grenade launcher. Yeoh ultimately falls off a moving van and onto the hood of Chan’s car, which stunt did not work out the first time. Yeah, ouch. Then you get to the part where Chan hangs onto the ladder of a helicopter as it flies all over the city while Michelle Yeoh follows it on a motorcycle. She finally rides the motorcycle onto a moving train, where she and Chan face off with Chaibat’s bodyguards, played by Ken Low and Ailen Sit.

From a pure stuntwork point of view, Supercop is tops. Even Quentin Taratino agrees, putting this film on his top movies list on account of the stunts[3]. Fans of pure martial arts may be a little disappointed with the shorter fights, especially during the finale atop the train. Knowing just how good a martial artist Ken Low is, we wish that Tong would have let him unleash his kicking prowess in an extended demonstration against Chan, but that wasn’t his style. Moreover, by 1992, Yuen Wah had long demonstrated that he could be a badass given the opportunity: just watch his work in Eastern Condors and The Iceman Cometh. His character Panther barely fights and Yuen’s physical skills are wasted in this film. The same goes for blonde badass Kim Maree Penn (The Death Games and City of Darkness), who shows up in the Thailand sequence but doesn't get to throw down with Michelle. I’m sure that some people who were introduced to Chan through Rumble in the Bronx and loved the fight scenes there might have been disappointed with the slightly more “Westernized” action here. But if you come in with the right expectations, Supercop is a hoot and half and fun ride all around.

---

[1] -The HKMDB entry for this film lists them as: Dang Tak-Wing, Ailen Sit Chun-Wai, Chan Man-Ching, Sam Wong Ming-Sing, Mak Wai-Cheung, Ho Hon-Chau. The HKFA page for the 12^th annual Hong Kong Film Awards lists the names for this film’s Best Action Choreography nomination as Stanley Tong, Dang Tak-Wing, (Ailen) Sit Chun-Wai, Chan Man-Ching and (Sam) Wong Ming-Sing.

[2] - This is actually kinda funny from a linguistic point of view. According to the HKMDB, Michelle’s character is name Yang Chien-Hua. However, in the American dub, she identifies herself to the authorities in one scene as Yang Choo-Kheng. Choo-Kheng is actually Michelle Yeoh’s Chinese name, albeit in the Hokkien language—Yeoh Choo-Kheng. “Yang” in the Mandarin pronunciation of the character 楊, which is pronounced “Yeoh” in Hokkien. Thus, the character’s name in the American dub is a mixture of both Mandarin and Hokkien words.

[3] - https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/quentin-tarantino-favorite-movies/