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Blu-ray Review: “Police Story: Lockdown” Is The First Disappointment In The Film’s Series

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A man looking for the release of a long-time prisoner takes a police officer, his daughter, and a group of strangers hostage.

I grew up watching every Jackie Chan movie I could get my hands on, including some of his earlier classics such as “Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow,” “Police Story 1 & 2” and “Armour of God.” Even when he transitioned to the States, his movies were still entertaining, films like “Rush Hour” and “Shanghai Noon” but the one element that set him apart from his peers, was the fact that he did all of his own stunts. Before it was commonplace in a movie to insert the outtakes over the closing credits, Jackie Chan was doing it back in the 70’s and 80’s but you didn’t just see flubbed lines and actors missing their marks, you saw many of the stunts he executed within the movie and how close he literally came to death while performing them.

With “Police Story: Lockdown,” Mr. Chan tones his stuntwork way down as he is now sixty one years old and physically not capable of the exploits he once used to indulge in. That’s not to say that he doesn’t fight here, on the contrary, he is still more than capable of kicking ass and does so, repeatedly but the movie’s overall tone is more akin to that of a gradual thriller, allowing him to concentrate more on substance over style. As the movie begins, Chan’s character, Detective Zhong Wen, receives a phone call from his estranged daughter Miao Miao (Jing Tian), asking him to meet her at her place of work, the Wu Bar. When he arrives, she introduces him to her boyfriend, Wu Jiang (Liu Ye), the nightclub’s owner, and naturally, Zhong doesn’t like him.

Because he runs an establishment with a lot of unsavory characters and troublemakers, he tells her that she can do better for herself but before they have a chance to talk, Zhong is knocked out. He later wakes up, tied to a chair and Wu Jiang is standing in front of him. He proceeds to tell him a story in which his sister was killed and that Zhong and a number of the guests being held hostage downstairs, are all to blame for her demise. Come to find out, Zhong had been called to an incident in a pharmacy where a poor man, on the verge of being arrested for stealing supplies for his sick mother, grabbed a young woman and threatened her with a blade if he wasn’t released. As Zhong tried to calm the whole situation down, the young woman forcibly pulled her captor’s hand, thereby, slitting her own throat.

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As Wu Jiang assembles Zhong and the other patrons in an enclosed room downstairs, people who were in the pharmacy at the time of his sister’s death but did nothing to help, he informs them of their situation. Accordingly, each of them denies any wrongdoing but Wu Jiang locks them all up together and with the police outside, he makes a phone call to them stating that he wants Wei Xiaofu (Zhou Xiaoou), the man who was jailed for killing his sister. Trying to stall him, the police state it will take some time for him to be transferred from prison but when Zhong manages to escape the room, he remains inside the building and discovers that Wu Jiang has set out on a suicide mission, intent on killing his prisoners and himself too. To prevent this, Zhong must come up with a plan not just to save the prisoners but his own daughter too.

The issue with “Police Story: Lockdown” is not the story or the setting, the problem is that the producers labelled the movie with the “Police Story” moniker and because the previous iterations were chock-full of non-stop action and martial arts fighting, “Lockdown” is a huge disappointment. It is nothing even remotely similar to the earlier films in the series and for those die-hard fans expecting stunts and action galore, they are in for a big let-down. Imagine going to see a James Bond movie with very little action in it or a Star Wars film with more dialogue and drama instead of light-saber duels and spaceships, all because of the misleading title of the movie. The other issue with “Lockdown,” is that the story becomes progressively far-fetched and preposterous so by the time we reach the finale, there’s nowhere left for the story to go but into outrageous and overly exaggerated territory, something you wouldn’t have guessed from the slow-pacing in the earlier part of the film.

Watching Jackie Chan do what he does best will never get old. If Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone and the Expendables can still throw punches and kicks and blow stuff up like there’s no tomorrow, then I’m sure Jackie Chan will be around for a long time to come. I just hope if he makes another “Police Story” movie, that it will live up to its action-oriented title, instead of the lethargic ridiculousness presented to us here.

Available on Blu-ray & DVD August 11th

 
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James McDonald

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, James is a Movie Critic with 40 years of experience in the film industry as an Award-Winning Filmmaker. He is also a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association.