THE THIRD CRIME’S THE CHARM: Up, up and away with ‘Supercop’.

I just recorded my DVD commentary for our upcoming (and much anticipated) re-release of the Jackie Chan action classic Police Story 3: Supercop. I well remember the first time I saw this movie. At the time, there was a long delay between the release of a film in Hong Kong and it finally (if ever) getting a mainstream UK video (or theatrical) release. I was living in Birmingham at the time (heaven help me…) and had been grudgingly granted membership at the local Chinatown video store. They had no other foreigners renting from them, so my membership card simply read (in Chinese) ‘white guy’. I walked in to the place one day and saw a poster resembling that of a Filipino action flick: a jungle compound blowing up, a helicopter on the verge of crashing… In the midst of this carnage stood Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh, and that was my introduction to ‘Police Story 3’.

I think all us fans of Asian action were excited to learn that Jackie and Michelle were joining forces. I had been a Chan fan since I first met him in Hong Kong, at the tender age of 19, and a supporter of Michelle KHAN (as she was then known) since I first screened her film Magnificent Warriors (in Taiwan) and met her in person (at stately Brocket Hall, where she was shooting scenes for her film Easy Money). They had crossed paths previously, shooting a watch advert together, Michelle filming a cameo for ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars’, but this was there first (and, so far, only) full collaboration.

The original Chinese version of the film was released in Hong Kong in 1992. Four years later, in the wake of the Stateside success of the second teaming of Chan and director Stanley Tong, Rumble In The Bronx, Dimension re-edited, re-scored and re-released ‘Police Story 3’ as ‘Supercop’. As I prepped the commentary, it was interesting to go back and look at the two different versions, and see why specific decisions were made regarding the US cut. (I was not involved with Miramax or Dimension Films at the time.)

The film’s original opening shot set it firmly in the colonial era, panning from a painting of Queen Elizabeth across to a meeting between senior American and Hong Kong Chinese police officers. The film is shot in sync-sound, and a presentation is given by a Cantonese-speaking westerner, played by John Wakefield. John must be the go-to gwailo for all the threequels. The following year, he played a Russian nobleman in Jet Li’s Once Upon A Time In China III. John is a decent actor in both Cantonese and English, which is more than can be said for the other western police officers. It’s easy to see why this rather stilted scene was replaced with an opening shot of Jackie riding his motorbike to police headquarters.

One thing I appreciated when re-viewing the film was how effortlessly Stanley and the action team incorporated Michelle’s character’s wu shu-esque fighting style into a contemporary setting. I wished there had been even more of it in Supercop (but we had to wait for the Michelle spin-off vehicle, Project S AKA Supercop 2, for that.)

Philip Chan is a familiar face for action film fans. A real-life former police officer, he has played one in numerous Hong Kong features (most memorably Hard Boiled, out now from Dragon Dynasty!), and also in Van Damme’s starring debut, Bloodsport. (Philip’s brother, Dennis Chan, plays Xian in JCVD’s Kickboxer, and recently co-directed the Jackie Chan-produced ‘Wu Shu’.) In a later scene featuring Philip, one that is truncated in the US version, we see his character is called ‘YK Chan’, appropriate given that Philip’s Chinese name is ‘Chan Yan-kin’.

For most of the movie, the only two guys Jackie fights are stuntmen Rocky Lai and Nicky Li. You can actually play a Supercop drinking game, raising your glasses every time these two appear. In one particularly quick edit, Jackie actually hits a guy on the right (played by Rocky) and then a guy on the left (also played by Rocky!).

In the scenes set in the drug baron’s compound, the American criminal at the gathering has a blonde female bodyguard, Kim Maree Penn. This is a case of art imitating life, as Kim, an Australian karate champion, used to run a security company in Hong Kong. She went on to play another security specialist in the TV pilot Hard Knox (co-starring Lee Majors) but it never went to series.

As I mentioned, I first noticed the film after seeing the poorly designed original Hong Kong poster (which seemed to be advertising three films at the same time!). Later Golden Harvest created a much cleaner international version, with Chan and Yeoh back-to-back in police uniforms. Unfortunately, they only generated that one, rather static image, so, when Dimension prepped Supercop for its US release, they organized a fresh photo shoot with Chan and Yeoh. It feels like the ‘black t-shirt’ images of Jackie have been used on every subsequent US DVD release of his films! Note to Hong Kong producers: when you make a great film, make sure you create the artwork needed to promote it.

Watched now, in the wake of so many subsequent actioners, Police Story 3 stands up very well, and I’m happy our DVD release will bring it to a whole new audience.

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