In recent years, above the Chinese action film market, Jackie Chan has become more and more powerless due to his age and physical decline, and his box office performance has also declined rapidly.
In order to reverse his career dilemma, Jackie Chan joined hands with his old partner Tang Jili to come up with a "Vanguard" with intensive action scenes in this year's National Day file. However, after the release of this "Vanguard", it did not achieve too prominent box office results.
The film was released for 22 days and grossed only 273 million. The dense action scenes in the movie did not surprise too many audiences, but the clip of Jackie Chan walking the stairs in the film became a hot meme repeatedly ridiculed by fans.
The market setback of "Vanguard" has made many veteran action movie fans reminiscent of the action Hong Kong film time of the 90s. After all, that time recorded the peak of the careers of Jackie Chan and Tang Jili.
In 1992, Jiahe created "Police Story 3: Super Police", and Tang Jili and Jackie Chan also collaborated for the first time in this work. After "Police Story 3: Super Police", Cheng and Tang worked together to shoot "Red Fan District", and Jackie Chan also smoothly moved towards Hollywood because of this work.
After "Red Fan District", Jackie Chan and Tang Jili collaborated on "Police Story 4: Simple Mission", an action blockbuster that plays from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere, and the planes, cruise ships and submarines gather, which can be called the pinnacle of the career of Jackie Chan and Tang Jili. Today we are going to talk about this "Police Story 4: Simple Mission".
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In 1994, Cameron's True Lies sparked a wave of "secret agent films" in the North American film market. Influenced by hollywood film trends, this "Police Story 4: Simple Mission" also followed the path of secret agent movies.
At the beginning of the film, a dangerous person named "Natasha" comes to Hong Kong, and Chen Jiaju and Uncle Biao cooperate with CIA agents to track and monitor Natasha.
Natasha joined a tour group to leave Hong Kong for Ukraine. Chen Jiaju's work should have come to an end, but CIA agent "Mark" believes that there are spies within the CIA, and in order not to scare the snake, he hopes that Chen Jiaju will also pretend to be a tourist, enter the tour group, and continue to monitor Natasha.
Uncle Biao, who was good at advocating, agreed to the cooperation plan for Chen Jiaju. In order to persuade Chen Jiaju to go on the mission, Uncle Biao said that the mission was very simple, no different from a vacation.
Chen Jiaju entered the tour group and followed Natasha all the way to Ukraine. After arriving in Ukraine, Chen Jiaju's surveillance work was successfully completed, and he planned to return to Hong Kong the next day after a handover mission with Agent Mark.
Unexpectedly, during Natasha's visit with the tour group, she suddenly fell out of the surveillance range of Mark and others. And Chen Jiaju mistakenly hit and bumped again, and found Natasha's tracks.
Chen Jiaju reported Natasha's whereabouts to Mark, and Mark also signaled Chen Jiaju to continue the tracking mission.
After some stalking, Chen Jiaju discovered that Natasha had met with a suspicious man. Mark also signaled Chen Jiaju to follow the suspicious man and report his location in time.
In this way, Chen Jiaju tracked the suspicious man to a ski resort, and Mark also sent his men to surround the ski resort according to the information reported by Chen Jiaju.
Suspicious men are at the ski slopes, making secret deals with a group of people, and when Mark's men arrive, the two sides engage in a scuffle. During the melee, Mark recognizes the suspicious man as the secret agent of the CIA, "Xu Jie".
In the exchange of fire, both sides used heavy weapons, causing a large number of casualties. Mark is accidentally shot in the confusion, Chen Jiaju falls into a coma in the lake, and Xu Jie takes the opportunity to escape.
Chen Jiaju, who woke up from his coma, found himself lying in a Russian hospital, and the Russian agent "Kade" also explained the reason for the incident to Chen Jiaju.
It turned out that Xu Jie was originally a spy installed by the CIA in Ukraine, but during the time of the mission, Xu Jie defected. Now, using his status as an agent, he got a "nuclear bomb" from Ukraine and prepared to sell it to a "mafia" organization in Russia.
In order to sabotage the "nuclear bomb deal", Kade hopes that Chen Jiaju will help and go to Australia to investigate Xu Jie's family. Chen Jiaju originally wanted to resign, but the enthusiastic uncle Biao, who was good at advocating, made a decision on behalf of Chen Jiaju and signed an action order.
Under the arrangement of The Russian intelligence service, Chen Jiaju took a submarine and secretly entered Australia.
After arriving in Australia, Chen Jiaju conducted an investigation into Xu Jie's family. As the investigation progresses, Chen Jiaju discovers that he has been used by Card.
It turned out that in the early years, Xu Jie was captured by Kade because his identity was exposed when he was on a mission in Ukraine. Under The Intimidation of Card, Xu Jie became a double-sided spy.
In this "nuclear bomb transaction", Xu Jie is just an errand runner, and the real plotter behind it is actually Card.
Previously, when trading at the ski resort, Card planned to get the "nuclear bomb" and kill Xu Jie to avoid trouble. As a result, the appearance of Chen Jiaju and Mark disrupted the original plan. And Xu Jie, who saw that Card was murderous, also secretly took the "uranium core" of the "nuclear bomb" to protect himself.
In order to get back the "uranium core", Kade wants to use Chen Jiaju to get close to Xu Jie's family in order to force Xu Jie to appear. Unfortunately, the plan was discovered by Chen Jiaju.
In order to get the "uranium core", Kade took a risk, killed Xu Jie's father, and married Chen Jiaju.
Xu mingming and holds a funeral for his father, while Card kidnaps Xu Jie's sister and threatens him to hand over the "uranium core". At this time, Chen Jiaju came to the aid, and after a big battle, he rescued Xu Jie's sister and successfully protected the "uranium core".
Uncle Biao also received a plea for help from Chen Jiaju and exposed Kade's crimes to the Russian authorities. "Police Story 4: Simple Mission" also came to an end with a big happy ending.
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When filming this "Police Story 4", although Jackie Chan was 42 years old, his skills on the big screen were still alive and well. And one after another big-scene stunt action performances have also made the film an insurmountable peak on the road to Jackie Chan's films.
At the beginning of the film, Tang Jili designed the action scene of "ski area gunfight" to stimulate the audience's visual nerves.
The gun battle scene is not a rare thing in action movies, but in this "Police Story 4: Simple Mission", Tang Jili broke the "flat structure" of street gun battles and came to an air-to-ground, air-to-air "three-dimensional gunfight" scene.
The shot of "missiles blowing up airplanes" has shocked the hearts of many action movie fans.
Of course, Jackie Chan's life-fighting stunt performance is also an indispensable element in this "Police Story 4: Simple Mission".
In this section of the "ski shootout", Jackie Chan also showed two burning stunt performances of "cliff jumping and pickpocketing plane" and "falling into the lake".
In addition to these big scene stunts, Jackie Chan also staged a lot of fist and foot fight scenes in the film.
The first half of the story, which takes place in Ukraine, takes the big-scene gunfight as the core of the display of the action scene. The second half of the story after traveling to Australia returns to Jackie Chan's iconic urban parkour fight scene.
In this film, the "stick ladder battle" of the Golden Dragon Hall and the "underwater kung fu duel" of the aquarium have also become the most iconic fighting bridge sections on the big screen of Hong Kong films.
It is worth mentioning that at the end of this "Police Story 4: Simple Mission", Tang Jili and Jackie Chan jointly designed an action scene of "flying car chasing yacht".
This classic action scene was copied to Fast and Furious 2 by Hollywood director John Singerton in 2003.
In this year's "Vanguard", although Tang Jili also presented a lot of action scenes of flying cars and gun battles, he also integrated a section of "people and lions dancing together".
However, after seeing the real action scenes in "Police Story 4: Simple Mission", this kind of action scene that relies on CG technology to assist in completing the movie is difficult to ignite the audience's enthusiasm for watching the movie.
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In February 1996, "Police Story 4: Simple Mission" was released in the Hong Kong film market. The action scenes full of ignition have made the film achieve good box office results.
After 1995, the Hong Kong film market began to enter a period of recession, and box office performance began to shrink rapidly. However, with its excellent production standards, this "Police Story 4: Simple Mission" won more than 57 million Hong Kong dollars at the box office in Hong Kong, breaking the box office record of Hong Kong films at that time and becoming the highest box office of Hong Kong films in the 90s.
Although above the Hong Kong Film Market, this "Police Story 4: Simple Mission" has achieved impressive results. However, in the distribution of overseas markets, the film has encountered many setbacks.
1995's "Red Fan District" allowed Jackie Chan to successfully break into Hollywood. At this time, Hollywood's "new line movies" also took the opportunity to reach a cooperative relationship with Jiahe and became an overseas operator of Jackie Chan's film works.
In 1996, New Line Films introduced Police Story 4: Simple Quest to the North American Film Market, the original 107-minute film. However, in order to take care of the fast-paced viewing habits of North American audiences, the "new line film" deleted the original film content and finally launched an 84-minute AMERICAN version.
Of course, with the deletion of the plot story, the US version of "Police Story 4: Simple Mission" has also had many plot problems.
For example, at the beginning of the American version of the story, the conversation between Uncle Biao and Mark was deleted, and the bridge section of Chen Jiaju's participation in the intelligence conference in Russia was also greatly deleted. The lack of these contents also makes the expression of the story ambiguous.
Because of the deletion of the content and the lack of fluency in the story plot, this "Police Story 4: Simple Mission" finally only won more than $21 million at the global box office.
After the release of "Red Fan District" in 1995, it achieved a global box office performance of more than 32 million US dollars. And "Police Story 4: Simple Mission", which has been fully upgraded in action scenes and production costs, has failed to break the record of the former, which is a pity.
It is worth mentioning that hollywood filmmakers in 1996 seem to have focused their attention on the shooting of "secret agent movies". This year, Tom Cruise filmed "Mission Impossible", Schwarzenegger filmed "Evaporation Secret Order", Nicolas Cage filmed "Daredevil Island", and this year, Wu Yusen, who was in Hollywood, also came up with "Broken Arrow".
The emergence of many market rivals has also become a reason for the overseas box office setback of "Police Story 4: Simple Mission".
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Although this "Police Story 4: Simple Mission" has created the peak of Jackie Chan and Tang Jili's career. But after the film, the film cooperation between Cheng and Tang came to an end.
In 1997, under the arrangement of "New Line Movie", Jackie Chan filmed "Rush Hour", which opened his own Hollywood film era. Tang Jili switched to "Disney" and filmed the comedy movie "Mr. Off the Line" for "Disney".
After the new millennium, Tang Jili and Jackie Chan have returned to the Chinese film industry. However, at this time, Jackie Chan was no longer as alive as in the past; and at this time, Tang Jili also began to encounter the career crisis of Jiang Lang's exhaustion.
In 2005, Jackie Chan and Tang Jili jointly launched "Mythology". Although the film achieved good market response after its release, after the film, the film cooperation between Cheng and Tang fell into an impasse.
In 2017, Tang Jili, who had been dormant for 12 years, once again directed "Kung Fu Yoga" for Jackie Chan, but unfortunately, the performance of the film after its release was not satisfactory.
This year, Jackie Chan and Tang Jili brought another "Vanguard", and also invited Lou Xuexian, "Xu Jie" in "Police Story 4: Simple Mission", to play the role of "Thai Strong" in the film.
Although many Easter eggs were designed to link with "Police Story 4: Simple Mission", after the release of this "Vanguard", the audience still did not buy it.
With the passage of time, Jackie Chan lost his abundant physical strength, and Tang Jili lost a steady stream of film creativity. The peak of their film collaboration seems to be forever locked in the 1996 "Police Story 4: Simple Mission".
Original 丨 Article Copyright Genus: Magical Blush Lake
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