Crime Story (Zhong an zu, 1993)
A rare entirely serious outing for Jackie Chan, "Crime Story" is apparently based on a real-life kidnapping case. Jackie plays a haunted cop obsessed with solving the case. Discovering he has a crooked partner who was in on the kidnapping doesn't make his job any easier.
True story or not, this is a fast-paced crime drama that never slows down, never gives you more than a few seconds to catch your breath. It's quite well filmed and with good production values, and pretty decent acting from the supporting cast. There isn't a lot of room for Jackie's typical martial arts craziness, but there is some fighting, some stunts, and some serious deep hurting. Lots of pain and mental anguish for our boy Jackie...which is always good! He suffers squirm-inducingly well here. I always like watching Jackie play a character on the edge, and he definitely does a good job of it here. I wanted a little more personal insight into his character, though, some exploration of his past more than a few frenzied flashbacks early on in the movie. There's no slash potential to talk about, except a lovely little scene where a bad guy plants a big smacker right on Jackie's lips to taunt him...oh yeah! That moment's worth a couple rewinds and replays.
All in all, definitely worth checking out, unless you only watch Jackie's stuff for the martial arts--even so, there's more fighting than I was led to believe about this one, so don't rule it out completely.
SUMMARY:
Overall rating: B+ Good stuff, a nice change of pace for Jackie
Droolworthiness: B+ Jackie wet, bleeding, suffering, and wearing snazzy suits. Yum! Though a little more bare skin wouldn't have hurt.
Slashiness: A for the kiss, but F for the rest of the film.
Action: B+ 'cause there's lots of it, though mostly gunplay and running around, and it lacks any real memorable fight sequence.
 | Ooooooghy! |
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