Police Story 4: First Strike (1996)

Police Story 4: First Strike arrives from 1996 with a briefcase full of nuclear intrigue, a Russian submarine, and Jackie Chan falling through ice. It is a machine built for momentum. The plot hops from Hong Kong to Crimea to Moscow to Brisbane, and the film treats each location as a fresh surface for a stunt. There is a shark tank, a snowmobile chase, a hotel balcony sequence, and a display car driven onto a boat. The cultural agenda here is simple: sell tickets, break bones, land the gag. Nothing in the screenplay pauses to instruct us on how to vote.

Annie Wu's Annie Tsui has agency within the story, working at an aquarium and hiding a warhead without realizing it. That is plot mechanics, not a gender manifesto. The villains are Russian and Chinese criminals pursuing oil stakes and nuclear leverage. Their scheme is ordinary greed, not a parable about late capitalism. The cast moves through Ukrainian, Russian, and Australian settings because the story is an international espionage yarn, not because a casting director was checking demographic boxes. No character discusses identity, climate, or body image. No arc invites us to reconsider history. The film's moral universe is the standard action one: stop the bad guy, save the girl, return the warhead.

Roger Ebert called Chan likable and graceful, and that remains the picture's chief political statement. It argues for physical comedy, practical stunts, and the pleasures of watching a man leap onto a moving boat. The film has no sermon, no lecture, no progressive checklist. It has a shark, a car, and a theme song that American distributors dropped. For viewers seeking social instruction, this is barren ground. For viewers seeking a man kicked through a window, it is a rich harvest. The sommelier notes a vintage of pure entertainment, with no ideological sediment.