Dir: Jackie Chan
Starring: Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Sammo Hung
Run time: 106 minutes
The best Jackie Chan movies have the same common ingredients: charmingly cornball humour, death-defying stunts and incredibly choreographed fight sequences.
There are times when Chan’s output weights the run time towards just one of these areas, to the detriment of the overall package. For example, in Police Story 2 (still a cracking good movie) a fair chunk of the plot is taken up by a sequence that sees Chan and some young hotshot officers tailing one of the main villains. It’s a sub-plot that quickly outstays its welcome and might make you pray for the next fight to break out soon.
But then there’s the glorious Project A, a Chan-directed caper that strikes a perfect balance between eye-popping combat, ludicrous stunts and genuinely hilarious gags of the visual and spoken variety. It never lets up for a second, sprinting ahead at lightning pace while always giving us something fun to see.
The plot takes place in 19th Century Hong Kong, where the local police force and coast guard aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye. Pirates have been terrorising the local seas and the government wants to cut the coast guard’s funding due to their repeat failures to bring the villains to justice. Dragon (Chan) is a proud and disciplined member of the guard (as charmingly stoic as he was in Police Story) who is about to embark on a new mission to find the pirates.
However, when the coast guard’s boats are sabotaged, Chan and his fellow seafarers must begrudgingly enlist with their rivals at the police force. What follows is a madcap caper to locate some stolen rifles, which takes Dragon, Hung’s bumbling thief, Fei, and Biao’s no-nonsense cop, Tin-Tzu, through many fun set pieces and battles. It even has some hilarious police training sequences in a similar flavour to Police Academy. I’ll never look at grenades the same way again, that’s for sure.
The ‘Project A’ of the title is the coast guard’s master plan to attack the pirates and defeat them once and for all. But without the proper funding, for the mission Dragon needs to do some solo investigating and snooping around to see what the bad guys are up to first. He also has to deal with his old pal Fei’s, whose greedy scheming derails the investigation at every possible turn. Both Hung and Chan are a treat together, with their trademark comic timing and charm oozing out of ever single frame.
One of the best sequences in the movie sees Fei and Chan pursued by some of the pirate’s co-conspirators, which leads to a crazy bicycle chase through some back alleys. It’s a fun sequence that sees Chan using the bike as both a weapon and a stunt prop. It ends with the set-up to one of his most iconic stunts, in which Dragon fights an assassin inside an old clock tower, before hanging from the clock’s hands by a pair of handcuffs.
The verticality of this stunt is dizzying and culminates with Chan falling through two canopies to the ground below. He ran the stun three times as he was unhappy with the first two takes, only to nearly break his neck on the final fall (you see the botched attempt during the end credits and it looks genuinely nasty!) Either way, it’s a highlight of the movie; a truly insane stunt that deserves applause.
I actually watched Police Story 2 a few nights before before Project A, and initially didn’t click with the latter’s period setting. I was worried the lack of modern day tropes and settings might make for less inventive stunts, but I was totally wrong. The final battle sees Dragon, Fei and Ton-Tzu throwing down with the pirates in their lair and it’s just magical from start to finish.
Just like Wheels on Meals, each of the three stars gel magnificently during the final battle, each getting their own little side stories and bad guys to fight, before it all culminates in a hilarious and weirdly rather violent way. From the movie’s opening bar brawl to its final moments, Project A never stands still long enough for things to get dull. It gives you non-stop laughs and excitement throughout, which is the epitome of the Chan formulas and definitely worth high praise.
Final score: 9 reloads out of 10
Pros:
- This is peak quality for the Dragons (Chan, Biao and Hung) with each of them giving it 100% effort.
- That clock tower fight and the culminating fall is just magnetic to watch.
- The final battle (and whole final third for that matter) is a joy to watch.
- Hung really nails the sleazy, bumbling conman/thief archetype so well. He did it amazingly in Wheels on Meals too.
Cons:
- It’s not the first time this has happened but there’s nothing to note here, Project A really is that great.
The Hipfire 