Jackie Chan’s legendary ‘Project A’ pictures reach 4K in a boxed set as lavish as home video can get. Chan’s pals Sammo Hung and Biao Yuen, and the amazing Chan Stunt Team assemble two of the most frenetic, athletic & death-defying comic action thrillers ever; the first is a Marines-vs-pirates epic and the second a semi-comic intrigue about police corruption. Fighting as well are Isabella Wong, Maggie Cheung, Rosamund Kwan and Carina Lau. We see star-writer-director Chan growing in cinematic smarts, while maintaining his limitless inventiveness for action scenes and daredevil stunts. It’s a 4-disc set, with all the bells and whistles.

The Project A Collection 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
Project A + Project A II
88 Films
1983-1987 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 221 min. / Street Date October 15, 2024 / Available from MVD Shop / 99.95
Starring: Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Biao Yuen, Dick Wei, Mars, Isabella Wong, Pa Tai, Hai-Shung Lee, Hoi-San Kwan, Wai Wong
Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Rosamund Kwan, Carina Lau, David Lam, Bill Tung, Sam Lui, Hui-Min Chen, Regina Kent, Yao Lin Chen, Kenny Ho, Mars
Cinematography: Yiu Jo Cheung / Y. C. Cheung
Production Designers: Yuen Woo Poon, Jim Fook Sing, Lok Tung So / Eddie Ma
Art Directors: / Chin Yiu Hang, Ray Lam, Eddie Ma, Lyon Tam
Costume Design: Mei-Ling Ng
Film Editor: Peter Cheung
Original Music: Michael Lai
Written by Edward Tang, Jackie Chan
Executive Producer: Raymond Chow/
Produced by Leonard Ho, Tang King-Chan / Leonard Ho, Edward Tang, David Lam
Directed by Jackie Chan

On the Jackie Chan phenomenon:

Unless something has slipped the world’s memory, this deluxe presentation of Jackie Chan’s first big-team mega-production doesn’t need a review, just a link to where it can be obtained. Jackie Chan’s fame and glory is such that his brand can’t be tarnished by 15 years of ‘late career’ movies or even his political stance regarding China’s dissolution of the Old Hong Kong. That thriving international center had the economic-cultural might to allow a big talent like Chan to become one of the best-known entertainers on the planet.

When Jackie Chan began directing his own super-productions, only Hollywood protectionism could slow his progress — everywhere else in the world he was a superstar. His big 1980s pictures are simply more adept than what was being seen in the West — James Bond 007 was stuck in infantile Roger Moore mode, and our action heroes were mostly posers with muscles (and commercial smarts). Jackie Chan’s physical prowess must have seemed like magic to millions of kids across the planet — a hero to worship, Chinese but largely separate from any cultural messaging.

This review is mainly an expression of enthusiasm. If some of the details here are correct, I’ll be pleased. We remember my kids cheering when Jackie, perhaps with one of his pals, defeated opponents in an expert, dizzying fight scene, and then stopped to proudly declare his credo to the other characters and the movie audience:

We first became aware of Jackie Chan through a stack of bootlegged VHS tapes, incomplete, ragged, and often inadequately subtitled, which circulated among trailer editors in the late 1980s. My young kids were at the time getting the benefit of martial arts classes. They were blown away by the incredible action to be found on tapes that were sometimes missing titles — ‘Armour of God’ …  ‘Police Story’ … ‘Project A’. Here was a kung-fu dervish with a positive attitude. His movies are impossibly fast-moving; analyzing the direction and cutting in the action scenes is an invite to a migraine party. The stories are simple, the characters clownish and the action slap-sticky; most of the humor is silly but sincere, in a spirit of good fun.

I’ve seen my share of grand Chinese martial arts fantasies that stand up as genuine epics. It looks as if Jackie Chan’s success is built on positivity — so many kung-fu pictures from Bruce Lee forward are dull vengeance kill-o-thons, or grim body-count wipeouts. Chan’s ‘mountain of fun’ is made from basic action building blocks.

My kids actually educated me as to what kinds of fighting would and wouldn’t fly with audiences in the 1990s. With a few exceptions, they found old-style action scenes impossibly slow and obvious. A key moment occurred when I showed them a scene purporting to be a ‘martial arts demonstration’ in the Bronston epic about the Boxer Rebellion,  55 Days at Peking. The fighting/dancing combatants leap about, dodging sword blows and blocking punches, tumbling acrobatically. At age 10, my oldest son declared that they must have slowed it all down for the action-illiterate American audience. Only then did it seem slow to me as well. Between actions in the choreographed ‘fight,’ Jackie and his stunt team could have delivered 4 or 5 extra blows. It’s a generational thing — my age group accepts ‘representational’ action and effects of all kinds. Kids raised on video games and reared in Taekwondo dojos dote on ‘the real thing,’ which moves like lightning.

Then again, pokey me is always looking for visual clues that martial arts films are undercranked, to speed up the action. That does seem to be the norm in a lot of Hong Kong action cinema. To his credit, Chan shoots his major stunts, especially the dangerous ones, following the same philosophy with which Fred Astaire filmed his musical performances — in one unbroken take, and wide enough to prove that no substitutions or editorial tricks are employed. We appreciate Jackie Chan’s art, just as we do Astaire’s.

My brood’s interest in Jackie Chan had an excellent outcome: Chan’s movies proved to be an excellent gateway drug into the rewarding silent-movie world of Buster Keaton. The two filmmakers have a lot in common, especially when it comes to shooting dangerous action in a way that proves the star’s fearless dedication to his art. The kids appreciated the purity of Keaton’s visuals and his droll sense of humor. Good news all around.

88 Films is really sitting pretty with their 4K of the The Project A Collection, which for the Jackie Chan faithful will play like solid gold. Each movie is presented in both 4K and Blu-ray, in multiple versions. We gravitate to the subtitled Cantonese versions, extended if possible; as the action takes place in Victorian/Edwardian Hong Kong, a lot of the dialogue is in English anyway. More seasoned Chan fanatics will surely have their own preferences — some probably prefer the all-English export versions they saw Back In The Day.

The 1983 Project A, if I have my info correct, was Chan’s first oversized thriller, and the one in which he combined his charisma with that of Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, his talented buddies from school and earlier kung-fu pictures. Ignorant as I am, I recognize clownish supporting players from his other films, and the bright faces of his leading ladies, who at this stage poke out from decorative, comic business only now and then. The export versions change some of the character names, which makes identification difficult — the extras in this set allow us to get closer to the originals.

Dragon Ma (aka Sgt. Lung; Jackie Chan) is a proud member of the Hong Kong Marine Police, which is caught up in political infighting due to corruption in the ranks and the unchecked activities of crime kingpins allied with a pirate chieftain, San Pao (Sam Pau? – Dick Wei). A fumbled attempt to arrest gangsters results in the special Marine unit being dissolved, and its members becoming ordinary policemen again. Dragon Ma quits, but is soon back on the case. His pal Fei, a gambler-thief (Sammo Hung) puts him on to a major crime — someone inside the police is trying to sell rifles to San Pao. The pirate eventually seizes a schooner carrying an English Admiral. The Colonel in charge decides to bend to the pirates’ demands, but Dragon Ma makes an earnest plea to be allowed to go after them. The Marine Police regroups for battle: Fei sneaks in disguised as a pirate helping to deliver the guns, while the Marines penetrate San Pao’s island base. Dragon Ma goes in disguise as a gangster, Mr. Chou. The final battle takes place in San Pao’s lair.

We can hardly breathe between action scenes in Project A. They’re enough to overpower any agitated kid hopped up on sugary cereals. Keeping things fast prevents us from dwelling on details — the action is the fun. Comic brawls overtake a casino and a restaurant, and flow into a bicycle chase in impossibly narrow streets. The basic action unit is a kung-fu fight enhanced with a constant parade of props — rugs, poles, chairs, bicycles. The fancy stuff involves perfectly timed moves. Many are more acrobatic than circus tricks.

Chan’s extendend end-title sequences demonstrate that these stunts are just as tricky as they look. The standard bloopers are painful mistakes, with Jackie scraping his back on a bad surface, or repeatedly taking falls one would expect to tear muscles and smash bones. Frankly, after many painful-looking falls and tumbles we lose the ability to judge what we’re seeing. Chan employed a stock company of crazy stuntmen, all apparently willing to absorb injuries for the glory of a great shot for Jackie. When actor-stuntmen do double flips and crash into floors and staircases, we see no padded surfaces or rubber furniture. Are all the actors really much thinner, and wear foam rubber suits?

Kids, adults, and household pets behold Jackie Chan’s action scenes and can’t believe their eyes. Much of what we see is choreographed dance-fighting, but so sharp and kinetic — and Fast — that we can’t keep up. First-time viewers might experience headaches, it’s so fast. Do we try to register each punch, blow and impact, or do we just go with the flow?

The pace and tone may at first be off-putting to those uninitiated in Hong Kong cinema. Characters grimace and shout their dialogue. There are no pauses between scenes and no holes in a soundtrack jammed with music and sound effects. Everything is abrupt. The cacaphony of staccato shouts, karate blow impacts and bodies crashing is unending.

Dragon Ma / Lung’s pals are just terrific, with Sammo Hung playing Fei or ‘Fats’ even though he must be 150 pounds of pure muscle. Chan has an excellent ‘jolly pal’ played by ‘Mars,’ alternately known as ‘Big Mouth’ or ‘Jaws.’ The acting is broader than broad but always pretty cute; the Anglos playing English are appropriately stiff. The last battle is about fighting, not a hostage rescue, as we really don’t see the officers and ladies being resuced. At the finale, we need a long walk to shake off the kinetic energy absorbed from this movie.

Later Chan movies would concentrate everything on more spectacular set-pieces, such as Jackie ‘flying’ inside an enormous Nazi wind tunnel in one of the Armour of God movies. Here we get a superficially Harold Lloyd- like clock tower sequence. Jackie hangs from the minute hand of the clock face and then plummets 60 feet down through two awnings, landing on the sidewalk like a broken doll. The unused takes seen in the credits sequence (and in the outtakes on the disc) look simply murderous. Jackie would out-do himself with a similar spectacular stunt in his later Police Story.

Project A Part II arrived 4 years later, after Police Story and the first Armour of God. Jackie has the able costars Maggie Cheung, Rosamund Kwan and Bill Tung with him, but not his pals from the first movie.

Dragon Ma / Lung’s future adventures are even more complicated in Part II. The police commission fears the influence of Superintendent Chun (David Lam), their most charismatic, accomplished detective. Chun frames and kills minor hoods to pad his resume but is actually in league with gangsters, pirates and foreign agents. Dragon Ma is transferred from the Marines to ‘assist’ Chun, but really to get some evidence against him. After discovering that the entire precinct save for Ho (Kenny Ho) is on Chun’s payroll, Dragon Ma backs off with three friends who came with him from the Marines, and takes on an entire group of gangsters on his own.

The plotting gets very thick. Lovely Yesan, Miss Pak and Beattie (Maggie Cheung, Rosamund Kwan & Carina Lau) promote the revolutionary Dr. Sun Yat Sen, who is opposed by agents of the Imperial Dowager Empress. Chun plots with the pirates to have Dragon Ma assassinated, or better yet, framed for the theft of the Governor’s diamond. It takes many reversals, and a lot of action, for Dragon Ma to sort out the factions, neutralize the threat posed by the slick Detective Chun, and restore law & order.

Jackie Chan advanced as a filmmaker in the 4 years between the Project A films. This sequel is more carefully filmed, with better lighting and more attention given to settings. No longer is every shot high key-lit, like a TV show. The streets look much more atmospheric, especially at night.

Jackie also appears to have studied some classic comedies. Instead of one action scene after another, there are extended set-pieces emulating older movies. A large-scale fancy-dress ball is a definite deviation from the previous all-action formula. A major set-piece is a peek-a-boo farce in an apartment, where most of the cast members enter, sneak around, and hide from each other, as in a Marx bros. movie. At one point a villain is behind a piece of furniture and three people are hiding under beds.

The complicated story takes more time to orchestrate the fighting factions. Dragon Ma does a kindness to a group of axe-wielding pirates, earning their respect and a cancellation of their vengeance mission. He also makes his peace with the revolutionaries, even after they frame him for the theft of the diamond. The most interesting dialogue sees Dragon Ma explaining why he won’t join the ruthless Communists, even though he respects their cause — as a policeman, he only does good things for people, one step at a time.

I’m not sure we’d seen Part II before; with those old bootleg tapes, we sometimes didn’t know what we were watching, and in 1990 or 1991 there was no Internet to help us get everything straight. The sequel can’t feel as fresh as the original, but director/star Chan packs it with inventive sequences. At one point the enemies Dragon Ma and Chu are handcuffed together, fleeing enemy attackers. There are certainly as many wince-inducing spills and falls as before.

Part II builds to a non-stop action finale a full twenty minutes in duration. Chun tries to crush Dragon Ma in an industrial press, but he escapes and the action launches from there. The chase sweeps through an enormous city set, breaking into construction sites and even an aviary. The climactic gag is lifted directly from Buster Keaton’s  Steamboat Bill, Jr.. Not as frenetic but just as inventive, Project A II presents Jackie Chan at the peak of his filmmaking powers, not long before he became a household name in America.

88 Films’ 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of The Project A Collection 4K may attract buyers that already have shelves of Jackie Chan releases — the remasters look ideal. Although the cinematography isn’t particularly artistic, it is always attractive, showing off the frequently impressive settings. Exteriors are expansive and interiors lavish — all designed around the scripted stunts and action set-pieces. We’re told that these pictures were filmed fast, and we believe it. It’s not unusual to see a shot with a mismatched filter to the shots around it. The first film has several shots that appear to use flawed lenses — just one part of the visual field is soft. Only in 4K can we even think of daring a guess as to what these anomalies might be.

Jackie Chan clearly works through storyboards but keeps his direction loose enough that we can rarely predict what’s coming. We’re convinced that some of the behind-the-scenes filming footage must be staged: the fight action is so intense, nobody could be standing around making jokes … it would all be rushed setups before takes and damage assessment afterwards.

We realize that these pictures have had numerous releases on disc. Apparently Eureka! had a series of Chan Blu-rays that were well-liked.

We had time to only sample the onslaught of extras on 88’s discs; a full guide is needed to sort them out. Some items are listed as new but many appear to be reused from older editions — not sure about that. I was curious about an interview with one of Jackie Chan’s stunt doubles but got no information about when such doubling occured. On most of the hairiest, keep-an-ambulance-handy stunts, it’s clearly the star Chan wincing in pain afterwards.

The alternate credit sequences and the outtakes will fascinate fans that want to see down-time on the set, or Chan occasionally being rushed off to receive medical aid. It’s obviously real — Chan indeed looks very pained and unhappy when injured. But that’s part of his image too.

Faithful fans will go directly to the  88 Films page page to peruse the disc specs, without my elisions and paraphrasing. We offer a rundown just to show how complicated a special edition can get. I don’t want the job of Q-C’ing one of these sets.

Both movies are touted as new 4K remasters; A has both a Hong Kong Cut and a longer extended Taiwanese Cut, while II has a Hong Kong Cut and a shorter ‘Export Cut’. Everything appears to be Dolby Vision / HDR10 compatible. Both have alternate Cantonese and Mandarin audio, and new English subs.

Accolades to 88 Films. I’ve bumped into more than a few new discs that are skipping authoring steps, or restricting mobility through chapters and menus. While remoting my way through these features and jumping from extra to extra, nothing hung up or refused to obey simple commands. That goes for the Blu-ray discs as well — all smooth sailing.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Project A Collection 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Very Good- Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent Cantonese, Mandarin, English, some with Dolby Atmos
Supplements:
Project A:
Audio commentary by Frank Djeng and FJ DeSanto
Solo audio commentary by Frank Djeng
Interviews:
with Jackie Chan’s ‘Best Stunt Double’ Mars Cheung
Dancing With Danger with Stunt God Mars
Master Killer with Grandmaster Lee Hoi-san
The Elusive Dragon with Yuen Biao
The Pirates Den with Dick Wei
Can’t Stop the Music with Composer Michael Lai
Plan B with Edward Tang
Featurettes:
Project Collector with Paul Dre and Matt Routledge
The Making of Project A
Lunar New Year Introduction
Out-takes
Japanese Version Ending
Hong Kong Trailer
English Trailer
Stills Gallery.
Project A Part II
Audio commentary by Frank Djeng and FJ DeSanto
Interviews:
with Anthony Carpio
The Big Boss with Chan Wai-Man
Documentary Someone Will Know Me focusing on three members of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team
Japanese Ending
Full-Screen Jackie Chan Recording Session
Hong Kong Trailers: Hong Kong, Export, Tai Seng
Stills Gallery
Extras
Rigid Slipcase featuring new art by ‘Kung Fu’ Bob O’Brien
Six double-sided collectable art cards
Double-sided foldout posters for both films
100-page Illustrated collectors’ book featuring essays by Thorsten Boose, Paul Bramhall, Roberta Chow
Double-sided artwork for both sleeves featuring new art by ‘Kung Fu’ Bob O’Brien & original Hong Kong posters.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: Two 4K Ultra HD + two Blu-ray in Keep cases in heavy card slipcase box
Reviewed: September 24, 2024
(7196proj)

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