Directed by Jackie Chan
Written by Jackie Chan & Edward Tang
1983 | 105 minutes | Cantonese
DVD, English-dub version

Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Kwan Hoi-san, Dick Wei, Lee Hoi-san, Mars
(David A. Thomas, Fred Tatasciore, Jennifer Paz, Danny Trejo, Michael Sorich, Tom Konkle, Keith Ferguson)

What it’s about: Sgt. “Dragon” Ma Yue Lung (Chan) is an officer with Hong Kong’s Marine Police around the turn of the 20th century. Upset by corruption in law enforcement, he quits his official job, but hooks up with his old friend Zhou “Fats” Yifei (Hung), a small-time thief, to intercept a load of weapons being sold from the military, through local gangsters, to leader of a notorious pirate crew, Lor Sam Pao (Wei). The incensed pirates take hostage the passengers of a ship, including an important official, and demand the rifles back as a ransom payment, but Ma convinces Captain Chi (Kwan Hoi-san) to reinstate him and let him pose as a gangster, leading a squad of cops to infiltrate the pirate’s hideout and perform a rescue operation.

Reflections: As a rule, I prefer watching movies in their original language, but I picked this up in a thrift store not long ago out of a sense of nostalgia. When I was a teenager, my mom went through a phase with Jackie Chan and Hong Kong cinema and watching this–the dubbed version in particular–brings up a lot of that nostalgic charm. The dubbing is generally not great (although Danny Trejo’s chilled-out take on Wei’s pirate lord kind of rules) and I think it does muddle the storyline somewhat, but the strengths of a Jackie Chan movie are in the physical comedy and inventive stuntwork and those shine through, regardless.

The plot, indeed, does feel like a boys-own-adventure mashup of martial arts action and pirates, which was a rather novel idea at the time. As a director, Chan has a lot of fun with the period style–watching Hung beating up guys in a top hat on floating timber, or the elaborate bicycle chase and clock-tower fight all make the most of the roughly Victorian/Edwardian colonial era atmosphere. And the action itself finds Chan at a confident point in his career–already a massive star in Asia and beginning to make Hollywood inroads. He throws himself off buildings, swings from chandeliers, and delivers wild gags, surrounding himself with other stars of the Hong Kong action scene, capturing it all with an efficient flourish and solidifying himself with an international hit.

This is a movie made for Saturday afternoons–a lot of high energy fun that isn’t trying to take itself very seriously. If one isn’t in the mood for that kind of thing, there’s nothing here that transcends that, but there’s still a lot to be said for the prowess, joy of movement, spectacle, and imagination on display. It’s one of the better Jackie Chan movies I’ve seen and a good time kicking back to for some escapist laughs.