Money Talks

As its title suggests, Rush Hour (1998) hit cinemas like a shot of adrenalin and got audiences feeling very giddy indeed.

In truth, hopes had not initially been high. A variant on the buddy cop formula (copyright: Walter Hill and 48 Hours), the film teamed gobby joke-smith Chris Tucker with martial arts legend Jackie Chan for the usual squabbling-then-bonding shtick.

But audiences loved it. An unexpected box office smash, it spawned two hugely profitable sequels that improbably transformed Tucker into the world’s highest paid actor. (The fact he pocketed $25m for Rush Hour 3 is by some way the funniest thing about that particular film.)

To most people, the helium-voiced comic appeared to spring from nowhere. But he’d actually given his sidekick skills a dry-run in an earlier, now largely forgotten film – Money Talks (1997).

The plot 

An unscrupulous TV reporter (Charlie ‘Winning’ Sheen) engineers the arrest of a small-time conman (Tucker) to create a story for his news channel.

But as the luckless thief is being taken to jail, he’s unwittingly caught up in a prison break when a criminal kingpin is sprung from chokey. The famously unforgiving LA police, mistakenly believing him responsible for the death of several officers, vow to bring in the hapless crook ‘dead or alive’ (with a pointed emphasis on the dead).

Hunted across the city and desperate to prove his innocence, the wronged felon turns to an unlikely source of help: the shady journalist who landed him in this mess in the first place.

The perfidious pair partner up. Can the criminal clear his name? Will the heinous hack get an exciting exclusive? Will this movie avoid shoddily mining every single buddy cop cliché in the book? No.

Falling star 1…

By playing fast-talking crook Franklin Hatchett, Chris Tucker found the perfect foil with which to reprise the motor-mouthed monologues that had made his stand-up act such a success. Although how the jibbering joker ever became a top comic remains a mystery to Exploding Helicopter.

His trademark rapid-fire repartee seems born not so much from an urgent need to share the zinging punchlines percolating in his head, but rather to obscure the fact that nothing he says is terribly funny. He’s the comedy version of a hamster on a wheel – expending huge amounts of energy but going nowhere.

Worse still, the stream of consciousness word-blurt is delivered in a migraine-inducing falsetto. Screechy and speedy but never funny, Tucker’s whole career is a triumph of sass over substance.

Falling star 2…

Talking of sass over substance (abuse), Charlie Sheen’s turn as the unprincipled newsman has to be seen to be not at all believed in. Now, coming across as a complete dick has rarely been a problem for Carlos Estevez, not because he’s a good actor but because he’s a complete dick.

Indeed, the coke-snorting wife-beater’s most profitable period as a thespian came while playing a sanitised version of himself in the hit TV series, Two and a Half Men. Sadly, his newfound popularity convinced the Platoon star – who once ‘accidentally’ shot a fiancée - that what his viewers really wanted was to see more of the ‘real’ him.

And in fairness, he did deliver. Looking through its fingers, mainstream America watched on as Sheen got himself fired, shacked up with two porn stars (then beat one of them up), and had an unforgettable drug-fuelled meltdown on national TV. Of course, all this happened after ‘Money Talks’. But watching the movie, you can already see that this is exactly the kind of guy such things would happen to.

Buddy movie breakdown

The buddy movie formula is painfully simple: shove two contrasting personalities together, then sit back and watch the sparks fly. The only real rule is that, while the partnered protagonists aren’t meant to like each other, the audience should find one or other of them appealing (or at least be amused at their sparring).

That clearly was an ask too far for ‘Money Talks’ and its hapless director, Brett ‘Fatty’ Ratner – a plodding cinematic journeyman whose mantra should be: ‘Will this do?’ Against the odds, Ratner manages to give us two irritating characters, played by two unlikeable actors, in an adventure you care little about.

Exploding Helicopter lays no claim to be a film scholar, but we’re pretty certain that’s no recipe for enduring success.

Exploding helicopter action 

Still, at least there’s a helicopter explosion. The pivotal scene takes place at the LA Coliseum during the film’s big climax. Our *ahem* heroes are pursued by two rival gangs who each want a cache of stolen diamonds (a sub-plot too tiresome to explain) that Tucker has in his possession.

As a massive gun battle breaks out, Sheen cleverly uses hand-grenades to booby-trap a helicopter belonging to one of the villains. When the police arrive, the baddie tries to make an aerial getaway. But the chopper’s take-off triggers the hidden explosives, creating a fireball that consumes the helicopter.

Artistic merit 

It’s always nice to see a villain’s despairing death throes and Money Talks treats us to a fine example of the form. As flames envelope the whirlybird’s fuselage, the desperado recognises his imminent fate and screams a despairing “Noooo….” before he too is turned to ashes. Quality stuff.

Exploding helicopter innovation 

Exploding Helicopter appreciated the clever and unique way in which the chopper was rigged to explode.

Basically, Sheen pulls the pins from several grenades and jams the now primed devices under the copter’s landing skids. As the chopper takes off, the pressure on the grenades’ levers is released causing them to detonate. Ingenious. 

Interesting fact 

After making Money Talks, Chris Tucker became a born-again Christian. It’s still not known whether God has forgiven him for this risible tosh.

Review by: Jafo

Police Story 3: Supercop

It’s hardly a secret that actors drive directors crazy.

Highly strung and unreliable, actors turn up late, say the wrong lines, have furious rows with other cast members and whinge about not being able to ‘find’ their character.

Unquestionably, directors have it tough. But even still, let’s spare a special thought for poor Stanley Tong, the man responsible for ensuring Jackie Chan made it to the end of Police Story 3 with an intact pulse.

Because troublesome as they are, most actors tend not to end scenes with actual teeth kicked in, eyebrow bones broken, arms slashed by real swords that were meant to be blunted, or broken vertabraes.

Your general thesp almost certainly will not get all the skin burned off their hands by sliding 80 feet down an electrified pole. And you can almost guarantee they won’t dislocate their pelvis: an injury considered medically impossible until Jackie gamely sported the look.

Nor (Exploding Helicopter’s personal favourite) is your run-of-the-mill board-treader likely to sustain an impact so hard during filming that part of their skull cracks and shoots up into the brain, necessitating eight hours of surgery.

Welcome to the world of making a Jackie Chan movie. Please check your health insurance.

The background

At the height of his powers in the mid-Eighties, Jackie Chan wrote, directed, and starred in a pair of chop-socky cop thrillers, the imaginatively titled Police Story and Police Story 2.

While those films were high on kung fu action and slapstick comedy, they were sadly low on budget and exploding helicopters.

But when the martial arts maestro returned for a third film, he sought to correct those flaws in spectacular style. Police Story 3: Supercop (1992) is an altogether more ambitious film.

The shanty town settings of the previous films are gone, replaced with an action story that sweeps through Hong Kong, China, Thailand and Malaysia. The series’ trademark stunts have been pushed to even crazier, death-defying levels. And chopper fireball fans finally get the whirlybird pyrotechnics they’ve so desperately craved.

The plot

Chan Ka-Kui works for the Royal Hong Kong Police Force. But don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s an ordinary cop. Oh, no: despite being about four foot two and wearing a smiley, slightly vacant expression, he's a ‘supercop’.

This, after all, is the man who previously used his bare hands to chop crime syndicates in two and deal a death blow to terrorism. (That he also sustained an impressive laundry list of real-life serious injuries, breaks and concussions while filming these heroics is, of course, quite incidental.)

So when the Hong Kong police launch a joint operation with China to take down an international drug cartel, Ka-Kui is the only man for the job. And he really is the only man, because Ka-Kui’s partner from the Chinese police is a woman. (I know: they’ll be letting them vote next).

Who’s in this?

Jackie Chan returns to the role of Chan Ka-Kui (or ‘Kevin’ if you’re watching the dubbed version).

Given the higher budget, Wee Jackie decided to also ramp up the almost-certain-death quotient of his showpiece stunts for this movie. But weirdly, the shoot turned out to be pretty quiet by his standards. He only suffered a broken shoulder, fractured rib, deep bruise on his back and dislocated cheek bone. The big softy.

Police Story 3 happily sees the return of action vixen Maggie Cheung as May, Ka-Kui’s long-suffering girlfriend. And after chortle-worthy turns in the last two films, Bill Tung also returns as manipulative police chief Bill ‘Uncle’ Wong. (Insert own ‘Two Wongs don’t make a…’ gag here.)

Michelle Yeoh plays the Chinese police inspector partnered with Chan to crack the case. Typically, this type of team-up would see our hastily thrown together heroes irritate each other to breaking point, before suddenly realising they actually fancy each other daft and bumping uglies.

This, though, is more of a chaste affair. While there’s some playful banter between the two leads, their relationship remains strictly professional and plutonic.

All of which stands in stark contrast to Yeoh’s experience a few years later, when she signed up to fight crime alongside 007.

In Tomorrow Never Dies, the unfortunate Yeoh was subjected to the amorous attentions of Pierce Brosnan, then in the midst of turning the Bond character into a spy equivalent of that pervy uncle at a wedding who clasps all the teenaged bridesmaids too tightly round the waist: ‘My, how you’ve grown’.

(And never forget: Tomorrow Never Dies also features the old Oirish smoothie archly delivering the sub-Carry On film groaner: “You always were a cunning linguist.) Still, while the Bond/Yeoh coupling was as unnecessary as it was inevitable, at least old Brozzer was knobbing someone vaguely his own age for once.

Mercifully, in Supercop, Chan is kept too busy kicking literally every other male character in the goolies to stop for a snog. And that means Yeoh – not to mention the viewer – is spared any leering one-liners and crude innuendo.

Was this a sequel too far?

The first two instalments of Police Story were comparatively low-budget affairs which relied on Chan’s chop-socky prowess and gift for light comedy to sell the package to viewers. This time, though, it’s all about the action.

From the destruction of a military camp in Thailand to a high-octane chase through the streets (and skies) of Kuala Lumpur, all the set-pieces are ambitiously staged and executed. And the finale, which sees Chan and Yeoh really, truly battling villains atop a speeding train – no CGI bollix here – is rightly hailed a classic.

(Just watch the outtakes at the end to see how insanely dangerous this sequence was for the actors to film. There’s a surreal scene where wee Jackie starts to genuinely fall off the hurtling train, only to be grabbed in the nick of time by one of his ‘baddie’ co-stars. The wee man just raises his eyebrows and giggles, as if to say ‘Wot larks!’ instead of ‘Jesus-Fucking-Christ-I-was-a-split-second-from-being-decapitated-there’.)

The introduction of Michelle Yeoh’s character also gave the film a new dimension. Intelligent and professional, her Inspector Yang character contrasts nicely with Chan’s well-meaning, but slightly tittish Ka-Kui. As a Chinese philosopher might observe, Chan is the Yin to her….. well, you get the idea.

Negatives

While Supercop boasts more explosive action than a Chinese New Year fireworks display, it comes at the expense of the roustabout comedy that had previously given the franchise so much of its charm.

In the first two movies, Ka-Kui’s dysfunctional relationships with his superiors (and his perennially-wronged girlfriend) were always good for a corny guffaw or two. But cramming in all that action has obviously left precious little room for light-hearted banter and as a result all the talky scenes have a stilted, perfunctory air.

Most disappointingly still, the movie’s villains – previously a rich seam of derisory incompetence and slapstick tomfoolery – are here played straight as a die. And dull as dishwater.

Exploding helicopter action

With Chan and Yeoh closing in on the roof of a tall building, the villains attempt to make their getaway in a helicopter. (Little known fact: 67 per cent of all helicopter journeys in films are made by baddies making an ill-fated attempt at escape. Oh, okay: Exploding Helicopter just made that up.)

Not to be stopped, Chan jumps off the vertiginous building onto a rope ladder that is still conveniently dangling from the chopper. The pilot tries to shake off our little hero by bashing him repeatedly through a series of advertising boards, but he doesn’t budge.

And why would he? This, after all, is a man who survived filming the lamentable crime caper The Tuxedo with Jennifer Love-Hewitt. This is the brave, brave soul who endured several scenes of Arnold Schwarzenegger playing an Arabian Prince (‘I ahm der Eas-dern Prinzz’) in Around the World in 80 Days. There is simply no punishment he cannot take.

Spotting an approaching train, the pilot tries to rid himself of the pesky Chan by swinging him like a conker into the onrushing locomotive. But with some artful gymnastics, Wacky Jackie avoids a splatty demise and ends up atop one of the train carriages.

Meanwhile, the trailing rope ladder gets caught up in the workings of the locomotive. Unable to fly away, the villains have no choice but to land the whirlybird on top of the train.

Naturally, a Hong Kong fist-fight breaks out between Chan and the bad guys, which is probably why no-one notices an approaching steel-girded bridge. Sure enough, the chopper smashes into the ironwork and promptly ignites.

As they used to say at British Rail: ‘Let the train take the strain.’

Artistic merit

At this point in the movie, the helicopter has already made a number of tantalising appearances. And of course, any fool knows there’s only one reason for a chopper to be in an action movie – so in cinema terms, it’s been showing a bit of leg and flashing its cleavage for quite a while now.

By the time it finally lands precariously atop a speeding train, helicopter conflagration enthusiasts – rubbing their thighs and panting for some hard action – are literally gagging for some blessed release.

Fortunately, director Stanley Tong duly obliges with a nice, bejazzling explosion. Though he doesn’t linger nearly long enough on the chopper wreckage: the big chopper-tease.

Exploding helicopter innovation

To the casual viewer, this train-related chopper fireball might appear unique. But exploding helicopter scholars will already know that there’s actually a surprising number of them.

See Broken Arrow, Derailed, Lasko: Death Train or Blue Thunder. And perhaps most spectacularly, Mission Impossible. (Although that movie is certainly sullied by the presence of CGI.)

Tagline

Meet the cop that cannot be stopped!

Interesting fact

This film includes “probably the greatest stunts ever filmed in any movie ever.” Those aren’t Exploding Helicopter’s words, but those of no lesser an authority than Quentin Tarantino.

That wasn’t the view of judges at the Hong Kong Film awards though, who gave that year’s best action choreography gong to Once Upon a Time in China II. Boo!

Review by: Joe