Police Story 4: First Strike (1996)

By the mid-1990s, Jackie Chan had spent the better part of two decades building one of the most remarkable careers in action cinema, doing his own stunts with a casualness that made Hollywood's carefully rigged set-pieces look rather timid by comparison. Police Story 3: Super Cop had already pushed the franchise into bigger, more internationally minded territory, and First Strike, arriving in 1996, continued that expansion with an ambition that is, depending on your tolerance for loosely stitched plotting, either admirable or exhausting. Produced by Orange Sky Golden Harvest and shot across Hong Kong, Ukraine, Russia, and Australia, it is a genuinely globe-trotting production, the kind of logistical undertaking that most studios would baulk at even for twice the trouble. The film brings back Chan's long-running character Chan Ka-Kui, this time recruited by Interpol to chase down an illegal weapons dealer, a premise that sounds clean enough on paper before it starts accumulating layers involving Russian intelligence, shadowy organisations, and the sort of third-act reveals that require a certain generosity of spirit to follow.

Behind the camera is Stanley Tong Gwai-Lai, who had already steered Chan through Rumble in the Bronx the previous year, a film that had done solid business in Western markets and whetted appetite for more of the same. Tong had demonstrated a knack for staging large-scale action sequences with a kinetic, almost cheerful energy, and First Strike gave him a considerable canvas to work with. The film sits in an interesting position in Chan's filmography, polished but unremarkable in its storytelling, yet genuinely impressive in the sheer physical audacity it puts on screen. Alongside Chan, the cast includes Jackson Liu, Annie Wu, Bill Tung Biu (a familiar face to fans of the franchise), and Yuri Petrov, with the international locations lending the production a sense of scale that Hong Kong cinema of the period was increasingly keen to project.

Jackie Chan himself, of course, is the engine the entire thing runs on. His willingness to throw himself off things, into things, and occasionally through things had by this point crossed from impressive into something closer to a philosophical position. Whether you are a long-standing admirer coming to this fresh from his earlier work or a more recent convert, the Chan of 1996 is operating at a physical peak that is genuinely difficult to contextualise without seeing it. First Strike has a runtime of 107 minutes, and the question, as ever with a film of this type, is what fills the gaps between the sequences that everyone actually came for.

Police Story 4: First Strike (1996) is peak Jackie Chan in motion, daring stunts, inventive fight choreography, and that signature blend of bone-crunching action and slapstick humour that only he can pull off. Chan is a one-man spectacle. His physical commitment is awe-inspiring, and the sheer fun he clearly has during the action sequences is contagious. You don’t just watch these moments, you flinch, you laugh, you marvel. That said, everything between the stunts falls flat. The plot (a convoluted mess involving nuclear submarines, Russian mobsters, and secret agents) is barely coherent, and the dialogue (whether due to writing or subtitling) is stiff, awkward, and often unintentionally funny. The tone veers between spy thriller, family drama, and cartoonish comedy with little balance. And while Michelle Yeoh brings her usual grace and skill, she’s underused, stuck delivering exposition instead of sharing more fight scenes with Chan. But let’s be real, you don’t watch a Police Story film for the script. You watch it for Jackie doing things no sane person should survive. And on that front, First Strike delivers. It’s not his best work, but it’s packed with enough jaw-dropping moments to make it worthwhile. Nonsensical, poorly written, but undeniably entertaining. A flawed gem in the Chan canon. For fans of action, it’s comfort food with a body count.

I keep coming back to that phrase, comfort food with a body count, because it captures something real about what First Strike is and what it is not trying to hide. It is a film that knows its own priorities and mostly honours them, even if the connective tissue between the good bits is thinner than you would like. For me, that is enough to make it a reasonable evening's entertainment, particularly if you are the sort of person who rewinds a stunt twice just to confirm that a human being actually did that. It sits in a particular tier of 1990s action cinema: confident, slick, occasionally breathtaking, and not overly concerned with whether the plot survives close scrutiny. Worth your time if you know what you are signing up for. Just maybe don't take notes on the submarine subplot.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1996  | Watched: 2025-10-02

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Trailer

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Stanley Tong Gwai-Lai: Rumble in the Bronx (1995) · Police Story 3: Super Cop (1992)
More with Jackie Chan: Hand of Death (1976) · Rumble in the Bronx (1995) · Skiptrace (2016) · Gorgeous (1999)
More from Hong Kong: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Hand of Death (1976) · Come Drink with Me (1966) · Street Fighter (1994)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)