POLICE STORY 2 (1988)
Directed by: Jackie Chan
Starring: Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Benny Lai

A classic in waiting, Jackie Chan's sequel to the genre-generating Police Story is Jackie at his most cynical and ironic. Focused on hand-to-hand combat the way Police Story was focused on mega-stunts, it's a study in frustration for Chan's supercop Ka-kui. Busted down to traffic cop after demolishing a mall at the end of Police Story he starts the movie as the underdog, then goes lower. Every cathartic moment is undermined by a cataclysmic accident, causing Ka-kui to spend the movie in a heightened state of embarrassment, nothing going as planned, conversations overheard, gestures misread, cops becoming hostages, and criminals becoming innocent bystanders. Frustrated at every turn, beset by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Ka-kui's life keeps sliding off the plate like watery Jello.

Bored and grumpy, with nothing to do but write traffic tickets, Ka-kui’s frustrations escalate when he finds out that Chu (played by Shaw Brothers director of swordplay masterpieces, Chor Yuen), the criminal kingpin painfully sent to prison at the end of Police Story is getting an early release due to terminal illness, and his consigliere, John (Charlie Cho), plans to teach Jackie a lesson. This results in a series of henchmen dust-ups in parks, playgrounds and classy restaurants that slowly starts to tweak Ka-kui’s nerves. His girlfriend, May (Maggie Cheung again), finds her patience for action setpieces stretched to the breaking point (as is her head, which required stitches after going down a construction chute head first in the climax) and she tearfully plans to bid farewell to her bad luck boyfriend.

Meanwhile…on the other side of town a gang of bomb throwing blackmailers are blowing up shopping malls, police stations, secretaries, and suspects in an elaborate extortion scheme. Romance collapsing, bombs bursting everywhere, Chu out of prison and gunning for revenge — the three plotlines run a relay race, one kicking in whenever the other two take a break. It's not the tightest script in the world but god bless Jackie Chan for ignoring conventional wisdom and just doing what comes naturally. The resulting movie may not adhere to Robert McKee’s rules of three-act storytelling, but it’s a fantastic study in workplace stress.

Jackie's cut of the movie runs a reported 20 minutes longer, but the version released is Golden Harvest's version and the only one commercially available and one can't imagine how much more story this movie could have taken before breaking. As it is we've got Jackie jumping through a glass advertising display (he missed the breakaway glass and wound up with head injuries again), Maggie getting the most screentime in any of the Police Story movies, bombs, disguises, and a trio of policewomen who are "good cop/bad cop" rolled up into a ball and tucked into a cute series of overalls and summer frocks.

An undiscovered delight overshadowed by its predecessor, Police Story II is to Police Story what Project A II is to Project A. Both movies take what was good about their first installments and deliver more of it in spades, only with smoother technical polish and greater craft. Not coincidentally, both Police Story II and Project A II keep multiple plotlines flying through the air, juggling characters and subplots with the greatest of ease, only occasionally bringing things down to earth to keep the story moving. You get the feeling that without studio bosses looking over his shoulder, Jackie would be happy to keep his characters and set pieces spinning up there forever, and in both these sequels, he just about does.