![[box cover]](../../reviewimgs/j/jc-firststrike.jpg)
Jackie Chan's First Strike
In the fourth installment of the Police Story series (and the follow-up to Police Story 3, aka Supercop), Jackie Chan once again stars as Hong Kong cop Chan Ka Kui, and this time he's tasked with hunting down rogue forces in Russia and Australia who are dealing nuclear weapons. Like the plot really matters. Jackie Chan films are all about the brilliant set pieces, and First Strike has plenty of great ones, including a wild snowmobile chase in Siberia, a bit of underwater chop-sockey in an Australian aquarium, and a sequence where Jackie leaps and crawls along the side of a high-rise building (and which will undoubtedly disturb the more acrophobic members of his audience). One particular hand-to-hand scene, involving Jackie fighting off a group of thugs with nothing more than a stepladder to defend himself, is brilliantly choreographed and one of his best bits ever. The annoying English dubbing, and lack of the original Chinese track with subtitles, is the only letdown here. Good transfer, very dynamic DD 5.1, trailer, textual supplements.
—JJB
