I Watch Films: Police Story 2

 

Police Story 2

Kevin Chan put the bad guy away at the end of Police Story but also used excessive force, broke every piece of glass in a shopping mall, and punched the bad guy’s lawyer. He’s reassigned to traffic duty to keep him out of trouble. There’s an upside; he has regular hours and his girlfriend May approves as this keeps him out of trouble (and stops him making boasts and telling ridiculous lies).

The bad guy is let out of prison on compassionate leave, as he apparently only has months to live. He and his assistant John Ko gloat about this to Chan. For the first of many times Ko’s glasses get broken. Ko and some thugs attack Chan at home; he sends May away to stay with her aunt, but then they are attacked as well. Chan confronts Ko in a restaurant and fights him and his men.

When he’s reprimanded he resigns from the police. He and May decide to go on holiday to Bali. However when they go to a shopping mall to visit the travel agency it turns out there is a bomb threat. The police don’t know he’s resigned and Chan takes command, clearing the mall. This turns out to be the right thing as it blows up.

His comedy double-act bosses take Chan off the plane to convince him to return to duty; May is left on board and accidentally he takes her passport so she’s stuck in Indonesian immigration, returns furious at him, and breaks up with him (again). Chan joins up with a special detective squad, which includes several cool undercover women, to investigate the bombings. Learning the holding company that owns the mall has received a demand for $10 Million to not get bombed again they bug them, and follow the lead to the bombing gang, which includes a guy known as Polar Bear, and a deaf-mute bomb-maker martial-artist.

Learning that the police are on to them the gang go into high gear. They double the ransom, and set bombs at a mall and the police station, then kidnap May. Thinking it’s the bad guy from Police Story, Chan breaks into his place to discover that he is, in fact, dying. It wasn’t a con! The bombing gang catch up with him, strap an explosive vest to him and make him collect the ransom. Chan manages to get out of the vest in a tunnel, where they can’t see or set the vest off, and then goes after them in their lair, a fireworks factory, where he must fight them and rescue May, while all kinds of explosive nonsense goes on around him.

If it never reaches the heights of the stunts of the first Police Story, it does have several comic setpieces that are very funny. And if some of them are in bad taste, they still work. A guy who keeps gloating, keeping out of the fight and sending in his henchmen, then his glasses get broken and he’s deflated, repeated several times may not be sophisticated but the actor makes us hate him so it works.

Watch This: Excellent Hong Kong action comedy
Don’t Watch This: Does nothing that Police Story doesn’t do