Jackie Chan's PROJECT A PART II (1987)

Comedy! Crime! Stunts! Hot *Pepper-Eating-Angering-Manical-Violence! Maggie Cheung's perfect timing (and pretty punim)! Have you ever wondered if Jackie Chan can escape from being turned into Pate (and it is a brief but terrifying bit of darkly comic business?) Well... now you can see it in his mid 1980s prime!

While part 1 of the Project A series has some more impressive fights, this is more ambitious or just funnier for me as a comedy and then mixing relentless set pieces that is like the cherry on top of the violent sundae that is Chan's confidence and brio and maybe even recklessness as a director and creator of visceral action.  

He has a sequence here involving just character trying to hide from their superior (maybe the Commissioner or someone like that) coming into a room and Maggie Cheung has to keep him distracted as Chan and this other guy try to maneuver around, and it is an excellent showcase for how much Jackie was locked in here to get as much out of every bit of timing and every possibility in the spaces they were in (and making the characters BIG always helps).

There is more plot to this one that makes things a little baggier in the second half - ultimately what is there to know except that Jackie Chan is the Good Cop and he is up against not only a criminal syndicate (the kind that laughs at his demand to arrest them, before they send in groups of guys to kick his butt), but Bad Cops as well - and all of the talk about not being corrupted and doing the Right Thing is where you can properly zone out (or I imagine if you time it just right go to use the bathroom if you are seeing this by luck in a theater).  But there is enough sprinkling about of kinetic action and stunts, times when Jackie has to get out of this place or that, or just the mayhem that comes being handcuffed to a guy and still having to fight comers with hatchets and the like.  

And that climax is... hell with it, I will say it is on par with what Chan accomplished with Police Story; the finale of that can't help but be burned into your brain (he repeats it enough times), but in Project A Part II you have like six or seven different things happening in the span of 20 minutes and it all flows seamlessly as the chaos ramps up from that Pate machine, to daring and scary falls and cliff-hangering bits (so to speak) off of roofs (those ladies are put through a lot, so it isn't just the star-director), to a hundred and one punches and kicks and that trip into the tilti-whirl or whatever it was, to the side of the building falling down and the Buster Keaton lineage being fulfilled (only this is more hardcore to me once you see it). 

Flawed film for parts of the story, but a must-see if you really want to see how this is a creator at the peak of his time. 

(*now I want to see Jackie on Hot Ones, natche)