106 minutes, 35mm, in Cantonese with English subtitles
Directed by: Kirk Wong
Starring: Jackie Chan, Kent Cheng, Law Kar-ying
Watch [the trailer] on YouTube.
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Head banging true crime cop action from one of Hong Kong's greatest directors and one of Hong Kong's greatest action stars, CRIME STORY is not only a battle of wits between Jackie Chan's cop and a bunch of kidnappers, but a battle of the wills between auteur Kirk Wong and control freak Jackie Chan. One wanted to make an asphalt grit, dark-night-of-the-soul drama about violence, corruption and the wages of sin. That would be Kirk Wong, who originally wanted then-rising star Jet Li for the starring role, but after Li left Golden Harvest feeling (as usual) that his salary wasn't high enough, Kirk Wong was left at the mercy of Jackie Chan, who was suddenly interested in CRIME STORY because he wanted to make his image a bit more intense. But for Kirk Wong "intense" is a cat swung headfirst into a wall. For Jackie Chan, "intense" is a new haircut.
The movie shows the stress marks of their struggle for control, but if you focus on the screen, the squibs, the hordes of cops invading night markets, and the cars getting crunched like used Kleenexes, you'll feel what happens when a big shot of adrenaline travels off a movie screen, into your eyes, up your optic nerve, and explodes in your brain. This is a neglected masterpiece in the Chan canon with the massive budget of a Jackie Chan movie but fully equipped with the dark n'twisted storytelling of noir master Kirk Wong.
Based on a millionaire-snatching kidnap case, CRIME STORY screams Shocking! Daring! It's all True! And it is: Jackie Chan plays Eddie Chan (the cop who cracked the real-life case and the screenwriter of the movie), a tightly wound ball of anxiety who occasionally explodes in physical fury. Law Kar-ying plays the millionaire. He's been kidnapped before and now the police won't listen to his paranoid ravings about a second snatching. Well, sometimes they really are out to kidnap you a second time, although this time the snatchers also snag his wife, who has a heart attack and has to be zapped back to life with a pair of jumper cables. Police Detective Hung (Kent Cheng) is the mastermind behind the kidnapping and in an ironic twist he's placed in charge of the case and Chan is put under his command. The two men follow the kidnappers from Hong Kong, to Taiwan, to China like a toxic Laurel and Hardy in a series of set pieces that sting.
Rated Category III (Hong Kong's "adults only") this flick hits us with the heavy stuff up front - in the first five minutes there're triad rituals, streets hosed down with gunfire, sex in an elevator, Jackie being treated like a crazy man by a police shrink - but towards the end of the picture Chan was losing his nerve and things veered back to safety for a great big end battle but no matter: it's still good. This is Jackie in the real world, where punches hurt, cops take bribes, and guns kill.
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