Watching a Jackie Chan show is like a trip to the movies when you were a little kid. At five years old I remember not being able to distinguish between what was real and what was faked on screen, a line that Jackie erases in every movie. A hero character in a pre-CGI American picture might leap off a tall cliff, tumble down some obstacles and then land at the bottom, ready to fight some more. The action could be handled in three or more cuts, with the star actor shown beginning and ending the stunt, and stuntmen or perhaps even a dummy used in the violent and dangerous middle section. If the actor is more than six feet off the ground, the chances are that a net or a sponge rubber cushion will be placed under him. Under no circumstances would a producer allow a major actor to risk his neck clambering up the sides of buildings, making death-defying leaps or risking an unplanned mishap.

Jackie Chan sees it all differently. Like a circus performer, he knows his audience is there to see him risk his life, and in each movie he delivers exactly that dozens of times. In Police Story we see him bashed through wooden walls, tumbling onto unforgiving asphalt and smashed through dozens of glass display cases in a department store. He dangles like a rag doll from a moving bus and avoids being run over by a car by leaping onto its hood at the last second.

It's not like Jackie comes through all of this unscathed, as he's frequently injured in these movies -- as my doctor would say, "Abrased, abused and contused." Part of the reason that Jackie couldn't make movies his way in America is that nobody would dare insure him: Many of his Hong Kong movies are self-financed. They're cheaper than they look, but they still cost millions, and who would dare risk their money to watch their star get crushed, impaled or likewise killed?.

If Jackie Chan were just some guy foolishly risking his life on film, Police Story would be a sleazy reality show, an excuse for Jackass imitators and impressionable kids to go out and maim themselves. Chan is a trained artist in the Peking Opera tradition and has been a kung-fu actor since he was in short pants (see Enter the Dragon). He has the eye of a great director: During his chaotic action scenes he always cuts to the most dynamic and artful camera view. In his biggest stunts he'll repeat the action three and four times from different angles just to show that it's real -- and to show off, too. When a show-off has talent, he's a showboat performer. When a performer has something really extraordinary to show us, he's a phenomenon.

Frankly, what Chan's movies most resemble is Buster Keaton silent comedy crossed with fancy Hollywood musicals. The action is conceived in terms of Keatonesque gags: "What can we do with a clothes rack? What's dangerous, and what's potentially funny? What's credible and how silly is too silly?" Chan's action scenes are constructed like Keaton's in that the stunt (gag) situations build on a premise, end with a 'topper' gag and then top the topper with a finisher.

Every action we see is choreographed, organized for the camera to let the audience best appreciate and bear witness to the talent of the performer. Just as George Sidney or Vincente Minnelli wouldn't break up a Fred Astaire dance with cuts or compromise it by only showing Fred from the waist up, Jackie Chan plays the 'stunt' highlights of his action in unbroken pieces without filmic manipulation. There's no step-frame printing or hyping of the action. The editing compliments the stunts; it doesn't create them.

The plot of Police Story is a framework of dramatic and comedy scenes to support the action set pieces. Jackie gets a good workout sorting out an uncooperative female witness and his jealous girlfriend. His screen persona is as a nice guy with nothing to hide, who of course runs into grief when things go wrong. Jackie suffers humiliation when his 'evidence tape' is played back in the courtroom and sounds like a compromising sex scene. Near the end of the tale Jackie is forced to kidnap his police superior at gunpoint and goes red-in-the-face serious for a moment. No, it's not good acting, but it doesn't matter. Jackie doesn't compromise his character, and the cops 'n' robbers fantasy can continue. Persistence and superhuman kinetic skills are enough to carry him through.

Every Jackie show has its unforgettable, crowd-pleasing highlights. A cavalcade of cars storms down a steep hillside shantytown (a rather clean one, if you ask me) smashing through tarpaper buildings as stuntmen scramble to get out of the way. Jackie uses an umbrella to board a speeding bus, persisting even after he's been thrown to the roadway below. For a finale, he cleans house with the bad guys in an all-glass (or so it seems) department store. Who cares if it's so-called 'candy' glass? All of those counters and displays seem to be breaking into real-glass shards, not sugary powder. We watch with our eyes peeled, hardly believing what we see. And then we cheer.

Weinstein has added a lot of extras, all of which will probably interest Chan fans versed in the minutiae of his career. The best material is an on-camera Jackie Chan interview where he gets excited about his work, and has to admit that his English isn't good enough to express what he wants to say. We wonder if he's too image-conscious simply to do a Chinese language interview, because a second longer interview piece with members of his stunt team is much better. Most of these men double as actors; their reminiscences of filming and accounts of camaraderie and near-death accidents are fascinating. It's excellent testimony from key sources.

Much less palatable are fannish accolades from film director Brett Ratner (X-Men: The Last Stand) and Asian film expert Bey Logan. They know what they're talking about, but we can supply our own breathless enthusiasm. Adults cheer Jackie Chan like kids used to cheer Tom Mix and Steve Reeves. It's a direct connection that doesn't need a lot of interpretation. Ratner and Logan are much better on the commentary, where they regale us with a wealth of detailed information.

The disc also has an ample selection of deleted scenes, alternate openings and endings, a textless ending and a gallery of trailers. Unfortunately, to start the show one has to manually chapter one's way through a gauntlet of trailers.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Police Story rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent -
Sound: Excellent (In Cantonese or English -- confirmed, Classic Horror Film Board readers)
Supplements: Commentary by Brett Ratner and Bey Logan; Deleted scenes; Alternate opening and ending; Tribute to Jackie Chan; A conversation with Jackie Chan; Stunts Unlimited: A retrospective with members of the celebrated Jackie Chan stunt team; Trailer gallery
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: December 15, 2006