9 Minutes that Explain the Joy of Jackie Chan

During the climatic scene of 1985's Police Story, the man and his stunt crew destroy 85 pieces of stunt glass and melt Jackie Chan's hands in the process.

Dec 01, 2023

The best way I can describe 1985’s Police Story, a Jackie Chan vehicle from his days as a Hong Kong action star, is that the movie is just sincerely going for it. Chan throws everything he can at the screen, trying to create an unrelenting spectacle of stunts and chases and things exploding.

Especially glass. THEY BREAK OH SO MUCH GLASS.

In the movie’s blisteringly paced final 9 minutes, Chan and his stunt performers will destroy (at my best count) 85 discrete pieces of double-thick stunt glass. That’s an average of 9.4 panes smashed per minute, with every moment topping the one that came before it. By the time it’s over, he’ll have melted the skin off of his hands. It’s wild. Here now the highlights:

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0:41: Chan flips a guy off a balcony, down two stories and into a glass display case

In his 1998 autobiography I am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action, Chan writes that he drew inspiration for Police Story from the skyscrapers of Hong Kong. He told his collaborator that he “wanted to do a film in which the action played with glass–breaking it, smashing through it, falling onto it.”

He really gets that ball rolling with this first glass breaker in the mall. Watch the stuntman pinball his way down between the escalators and smash his way through the glass cabinet on the first floor. He basically misses the cabinet—yeesh. It won’t be the last stunt where a landing doesn’t go super great.

1:35: Chan breaks a balcony, crashes over a railing, through a pergola and onto the floor

Listen closely. The full sequence has roughly 3 or 4 glass-breaking sound effects, and they all sound pretty similar. They’re using all of them now, trying to mix them up for the sake of variety, but that will change soon.

Also, it’s unclear what Chan lands on here. Maybe just the floor? That pergola was made of nothing but balsa wood and bad ideas. It broke 0% of his fall.

2:06: Chan flying kicks a guy so hard that he does a forward flip into a jewelry counter

Another not great landing, made all the more impressive by this—Chan special ordered double thick stunt glass for the movie because he wanted the glass-related stunts to look as real as possible. From his autobiography:

“This made it twice as dangerous, of course; people were getting bruised and cut all the time, and at one point, Willie was going back and forth from the set to the hospital every day, taking over new injured people and checking on the ones who were already hurt. But anything less would not have the same effect.”

And where did he get the glass? AMERICA. When you want something excessive and painful, the U-S-of-A is here for you.

2:39: Chan kicks a guy into a stairway to heaven made of shoes and glass

2:51: Chan swings a guy into a Barbie Dreamhouse by his legs

Chan goes full-on “fun uncle who occasionally gets in trouble for playing too hard” mode by airplane swinging a mustachioed-powder-blue-suit-wearing bad guy through glass, a Barbie Dreamhouse, and then more glass.

Note: I believe my sister had that Barbie Dreamhouse, only without the chunks of glass and mustache in it.

After a few good smashes, there’s a glass-free lull where Chan gets punched repeatedly. It’s a great action sequence as he gets attacked from all sides, but not a speck of glass is broken. Like, did they forget about the glass? Did they run out? It just seems like it’s time to up the ante, right?

3:44: Chan double kicks a bad guy so hard that he does a half-flip-with-one-and-a-half-twist gainer through 4 panes of glass and into a department store mannequin

Don’t worry y’all. They didn’t run out of glass.

5:15: Driving a motorcycle, Chan smashes into a bad guy and propels him through at least 10 yards of glass panes and into a wall

The glass breaking is accelerating. Entire shelves and display cases are getting destroyed within moments of each other. And then there’s this—Chan drives a stuntman through a Costco-sized parade of glass display cases. Such a joy.

At this point, they’ve given up all pretense of hitting different glass breaking sound effects and are spamming what I’m calling “LOUD_BREAKING_GLASS_SOUND_EFFECT_2.WAV.” It’s the best one. It’s the glassiest of the glass sound effects. It’s basically the Johnny Cage sweep kick in Mortal Kombat—smash it over and over again and you can’t go wrong.

Speaking of smashing something over and over again, here’s Jackie Chan sending his body through a tornado of broken glass, Christmas lights and sparks as he rides a pole down three stories. By golly, this is amazing.

6:32: Chan jumps from a railing to a pole and slides down through exploding lights, finally dropping through hundreds of pounds of glass at the bottom of the mall

Missed it? Don’t worry, the movie repeats the same stunt several times because WE ALL WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN.

6:38: Same Stunt

6:43: Same Stunt

Chan’s description from his autobiography is even more intense than the actual footage.

“We had only one chance to make the stunt work, because otherwise we’d never get the place back in order by our deadline. The cameras started rolling, and the mall went quiet. I leaped from the third-story balcony and slid, and slid, and fell, and crashed. Glass exploded in all directions, and there I was, flat on my back on the hard floor of the ground level. Everybody held their breath, not knowing if I was hurt, and if so, how badly. And despite the pain throughout my body, especially my hands, I managed to stand up.”

Chan also shares that, due to the heat of the pole from the lights and wires, he received second degree burns on his hands from the stunt, among various other injuries. It’s a testament to his commitment to his craft, and the earnestness he brings to making movies that are truly spectacular.

AND THEY ARE STILL NOT OUT OF GLASS.

9 Minutes that Explain the Joy of Jackie Chan

During the climatic scene of 1985's Police Story, the man and his stunt crew destroy 85 pieces of stunt glass and melt Jackie Chan's hands in the process.

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