Police Story 3: Supercop (1992)

Police Story 3: Supercop (1992)

8/10

Starring

Jackie Chan

Michelle Yeoh

Directed by Stanley Tong

For me, Police Story 3 or Supercop is the height of the Police Story franchise. It’s just as good as the first film, if not better. Everything about Jackie in this film is crafted to make the viewer not want to miss a minute. As usual, the stunts are amazing, the fight choreography is outstanding, and to think that Michelle Yeoh also did her own stunts in this movie made me like it even more.

For me, you can’t get through a list of Jackie’s best movies without passing through this one. The story is very engaging, and it was nice to see the movie take a different path than Police Story 2, but similar to Police Story 1. Like Police Story 1, the focus is on the story and how things evolve, other than just fighting. This time, they take Jackie out of the city, and he plays an undercover cop who infiltrates a drug lord's gang to bring him down from the inside.

The way the movie develops to an exploding climax, which stays through until the end, is something I really enjoyed.

The movie starts with an introduction to the present challenge. There’s a drug kingpin that has to be taken down, and there’s a need for a supercop who can survive infiltrating the kingpin’s gang to take him down. Immediately, Jackie is called to be on the case. He’s flown to China, where he meets Interpol inspector Yang (Michelle Yeoh), who is there to help with his infiltration and also aid in his survival. Jackie is tasked with helping the kingpin's main man escape from prison to win his trust.

With one of the lamest prison escapes—which I enjoyed more for its silliness since they didn’t hide it—Jackie manages to get into the gang. Soon, he gets Yang in, too, as she’s also undercover. Now, both must survive the erratic gang leader and bring down his empire.

In the end, the movie was a critical success, which paved the way for a fourth film in the series. Unlike the first two films (Police Story and Police Story 2), Jackie is not in the director's seat. The movie follows Jackie’s story from the first film, but sadly, we don’t get to see some of the cast from the first two films in their usual roles.

Also, this is where we say goodbye to the May character, played by Maggie Cheung, who has been Jackie’s girlfriend since the first film. She didn’t die, mind you, she just didn’t feature in any of the other movies after this.

The magnificent performance of Yeoh led to her starring a year later in the spin-off called Supercop 2, which features a cameo appearance by Jackie Chan.

There’s no reason not to see this movie. The way the plot is crafted, you can watch this as a standalone film without having seen the first two (Police Story and Police Story 2) in the series.