Veteran Hong Kong star Jackie Chan is as agile with his words as he is in performing his own action stunts in films.
While promoting his hit comedy action movie CZ12 last year, he had said it would be his last major action movie.
Fast forward to the present: He was in Singapore yesterday to promote the latest instalment of his popular Police Story action movie franchise.
Explaining his apparent about-face to local reporters, the 59-year-old says drily: “Since I’m still young, I should make more action films.”
Almost a decade after New Police Story (2004), he is back in Police Story 2013, another reboot of the highly successful Police Story film series which started in 1985.
In the new film, where he plays a cop thrust into a hostage situation, the tone is darker compared to the first four instalments of Police Story.
After having played cops from the 1980s till today, he observes how movie cops have evolved over the years. “Cops nowadays have more of an interior life. This new film’s cop has a family and a daughter, and I find that quite moving. As I get older, I like emotional drama more.”
He is quite dismissive of his earlier works with all that “endless fighting and jumping”. The story here is key and “more important than the fighting”, he adds.
He professes that he no longer makes films for the money but for his own interest and the fact that he likes challenges.
He has yet to take on a villain role though and says he might try playing a “good bad guy, as Sylvester Stallone says”. If the right baddie role proves elusive, that is okay. He says his film slate is packed with several projects anyway.
“If I don’t make films, I don’t know what else to do. Every day, I’m thinking of different ideas.”
With a decades-long career spanning plenty of hits on his resume, Chan is confident when he says he knows what audiences want.
“They are tired of films with people flying about. They like to see genuine down-to-earth Jackie Chan flicks.”
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Jackie Chan back in action
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