Review of Project A (1983) by Jesse O — 27 Aug 2012

I'm an absolute elitist when it comes to watching movies in their original language. I can't stand it when I have to watch a dubbed version of a film. The issues I have with it basically have to do with the voice over not matching up to what's going on on-screen.

Sometimes the voice-overs are so bad that I end up disliking the movie because of it. In this movie I made an exception for the shitty dubbing, and let me tell you it was pretty terrible, but it's not like the movie had such dynamic acting that it would've made much of a difference.

And since the story itself is very cheesy, the bad voice over only added to its charm. Thankfully there are some awesome action scenes to more than make up for what it lacks. Jackie Chan, and his stunt team, did some incredible shit back in the day.

It was a very fast paced and physical fighting style. Guys would get dropped on their back from considerable heights. There was the scene at the clock tower, and I don't know how this was put together, if Jackie actually fell from the top of the tower to the floor, but he fell RIGHT on the top of his head.

I really doubt he actually fell from that height, the fall would have been over 20 feet, since a fall like that on top of his head would most likely cripple a man. And he's not even the only one to do such dangerous stunts, there are several times where I flinched because I thought a man had been killed, not literally of course, but I most certainly thought some of them had been greatly injured.

It's actually amazing, because Jackie Chan had a relatively long career doing these dangerous stunts. Granted, it's come back to bite him in the ass now, since his body is pretty much broken down.

But yea the point is, the stunts in this film were pretty incredible and the fight scenes were fantastic. Especially the last fight between the evil pirate and several of the good guys. I imagine a scene like that had to be re-done a bunch of times with the fast pace that all guys were fighting at.

But at least the scene plays out very smoothly and very exciting. Of course the movie does mix in physical comedy as well, and it's welcome in this type of movie. So really a very cheesy and corny plot, and shitty voice overs, keep this from being a very good movie but it's still a lot of fun to watch.