Project A
1984
Director: Jackie Chan
Stars: Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Sammo Hung, Dick Wei
Chan plays Dragon Ma, a tough member of the Hong Kong Coast Guard who is put in charge of "Project A," an ambitious plan to arrest a group of pirates led by Dick Wei. As the movie progresses, Chan teams with a by-the-book cop (Yuen) and a shifty thief (Hung) to stop the pirates.
This is without a doubt one of Chan's best movies. There's plenty of action and comedy, the plot is original (at least for a Chan movie) and thankfully, there's no ditzy female sidekick weighing Chan down. Project A starts off a bit slow, concentrating mostly on Chan and his group training under Yuen, but once it takes off, Project A is wall-to-wall action. I could go into some lengthy reasons why you should see this movie, but I won't. If you're a Jackie Chan fan and haven't seen this film by now, then you're really missing out.
RATING: 9
Note: Dimension's US version is edited, has a pretty bad dub job and is re-scored. It should be avoided unless you can't find the HK version. Some of the cut scenes include:
- In the bar room brawl, the scene of the guy getting hit on the face with a plate of spaghetti and all the scenes of him trying to hit other people with spaghetti, and also the part where two marines get on top of the table and start doing their routine making fun of the police is gone. The scene has also been radically re-scored so the movements don't match to the music like they did in the HK version.
- Most of the training scenes are cut, including the scene where all the marines are taking a shower and Biao makes them come out of the shower naked (probably cut to keep a PG-13 rating) and the grenade sequence.
- The introduction of Sammo's character at the casino is cut, as is the scene of him talking to the gangster at the VIP club. The first time we see him is when Jackie and Yuen Biao enter the VIP club. The dubbing cuts out some of the humor between Jackie/Yuen and the snotty doorman, since the whole part is dubbed into English, instead of the HK version where just the doorman speaks English (the part where the doorman says "do you understand? And Jackie replies "no" doesn't make sense in the US version).
- Some of the island sequence is cut, such as when Jackie finds the hostages and tells them everything's going to be okay. The final fight is also trimmed, again probably to keep the PG-13 rating.
- All the outtakes at the end of the movie are cut in the US version.
(some info from The Asian DVD Guide)
Check out a clip from Project A (clip from Zine on Fire)
A review of the DVD for this movie (US version) can be found here
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