New Police Story

After a string of pedestrian Hollywood adventures, Jackie Chan returns for another instalment in the popular 'Police Story' series. This time, his burnt-out cop is on the trail of a gang of murderous computer game fanatics who are terrorising Hong Kong with a series of elaborate robberies. The problem with 'New Police Story' isn't that the fifty-something Chan is too old for this sort of thing. As he demonstrates in a succession of scenes, the martial arts legend is more than capable of holding his own in a scrap, though inevitably he now shares the heroics with a much younger partner. No, what lets it down is its fearless dedication to cliche. Scenes of the good cop drowning his sorrows or the old "red wire/green wire" conundrum make it feel as if the past twenty years never happened. Sure, there are a clutch of decent action scenes, but Chan is desperately in need of a few new ideas if he wants to continue making movies. [Matt McAllister]