All Rise...

Judge David Johnson does most of his own stunts. Just not the ones requiring full frontal nudity.

Editor's Note

Our reviews of Supercop: Two-Disc Ultimate Edition (published January 28th, 2009), Twin Dragons (published October 5th, 1999), and Twin Dragons (Blu-ray) (published August 18th, 2011) are also available.

The Charge

Since no one poured a whole lot of thought into this release, I'm going to do the same with this review…

The Case

Two old Jackie Chan movies, pressed onto one disc. Here we go:

Supercop
To infiltrate a druglord's empire, a regular cop just isn't going to cut it. That's why the department looks to get themselves a SUPERCOP, which is a guy who's just like a cop, except even more super. That man is Inspector Chan Ka Kui (Chan, The Karate Kid) a martial arts wizard and, judging from the types of stunts he'll undertake in the name of crime-fighting, a complete lunatic.

Helping him with his dangerous mission is a lethal Interpol agent (Michelle Yeoh, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) who is apparently just as nuts, and together they utilize their supreme athleticism to over-compensate for the legendarily terrible disc cover art.

Twin Dragons
Jackie Chan doubles up his duties, playing twin brothers separated at birth. One is a martial arts bad-ass from the streets of Hong Kong, the other is a pony-tail sporting classical musician from New York City. The first time these two meet ends in the predictable identity swap and they'll have to work together to extricate each other from the resulting gang war.

My respect for Chan's willingness to go all out for his movies knows no bounds, but I must confess: I've never been enamored with his light-hearted brand of movie-making. But that's just me. I tend more towards the grittier, bad-ass kind of stuff. Supercop is a corny affair, though it has two big things going for it: 1) the stunts Chan executes are simply ridiculous, and 2) Michelle Yeoh. The train sequence that caps the film stands out as top-shelf bit of action, with Chan engaging in all manner of fisticuffs with apparently no restraints keeping him safe and Michelle Yeoh lands a dirt bike on a moving train car. Immediately preceding this tomfoolery is the iconic helicopter scene, where Chan swings on a rope ladder being pulled by a chopper over the cityscape. Again—insane.

Twin Dragons is far less compelling. There are some great stunts, particularly in a sequence staged at a car-testing facility that allows Chan to endanger himself plenty of times among falling coupes. But that is overshadowed by the achingly cheesy identical twin comedy. The jokes are flat and the special effects used to duplicate Chan are laughably archaic.

No matter. This is a Blu-ray that screams "let's get these movies in a blue case immediately!" Both films receive 1.78:1 transfers (1080p for Supercop, 1080i for Twin Dragons) that are so soft they could easily pass for an upconverted DVD. Sporadically, a detail pops here and there, but overall these are sad, unimpressive visual treatments. Worse is the audio, as you'll be forced to suffer through a pair of dubbed 2.0 stereo tracks, your only choice for listening options. No extras.

The Verdict

Guilty of a half-baked cash grab.

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