General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Project A II (A计划续集)

Project A II (A計劃續集; also known as Project A 2 or Project A Part II) is a 1987 Hong Kong action comedy film directed, co-written, and headlined by Jackie Chan, and the second installment of the Project A series begun with Project A (1983).¹ Chan plays Sergeant Dragon Ma, a police officer transferred to run the Sai Wan district, where he confronts a corrupt inspector, anti-Manchu revolutionaries, Qing imperial agents, and pirates seeking revenge.¹ The film was a major commercial success, ranking third among Chinese-language films at the 1987 Hong Kong box office, and it won Best Action Design at the 7th Hong Kong Film Awards.²

Key fact	Detail
Release	Japan 25 July 1987; Hong Kong 19 August 1987²
Director and writers	Jackie Chan (director, co-writer, action director, star); co-writer Edward Tang³
Principal cast	Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Rosamund Kwan, Carina Lau, David Lam, Bill Tung¹
Production	Golden Way Films / Golden Harvest; producer Leonard Ho; music Michael Lai; cinematography Cheung Yiu-Cho³
Box office	HK$31,459,916 in Hong Kong (3rd for 1987 Chinese films); about 1.9 billion yen in Japan (12th for the year)²
Awards	Best Action Design, 7th Hong Kong Film Awards (Jackie Chan Stunt Team); nominated for Best Feature Film at the 24th Golden Horse Awards²
Critical scores	73% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (11 reviews); 7.0/10 on IMDb¹^•⁴

Spoilers

Story

The film is set in Hong Kong in the late Qing dynasty, when policing was still disorganized. The chief inspector known as Zhen Sanhuan (镇三环, "Three Rings of the City"), who controls the Central, Western, and Sheung Wan districts, secretly colludes with local gangsters, protecting prostitution and gambling.⁵ His superiors assign the honest officer Dragon Ma (馬如龍) to take over Sai Wan, where he promptly arrests a gangland boss and earns Zhen Sanhuan's enmity.⁵

Multiple antagonists. Dragon Ma's troubles multiply from three directions. Revolutionaries including Bai Yinghong, Yingying, and Shanshan (played by Rosamund Kwan, Maggie Cheung, and Carina Lau) are in Sai Wan spreading anti-Qing propaganda, and the Qing court sends secret agents to Hong Kong to capture them, with Zhen Sanhuan as their inside collaborator.⁵ At the same time, the pirates Dragon Ma defeated in the first film are plotting revenge against him.⁶ The English-language synopsis adds that Dragon Ma is framed for a jewelry robbery and must clear his name while fighting spies, pirates, and revolutionaries.⁷ In the resolution, Dragon Ma rescues the revolutionaries from the Qing agents and has Zhen Sanhuan brought to justice.⁸

Production

Project A II (1987) predates Miracles (1989); Chan himself was dismissive of the project as makework, except for one sequence in which five different groups of people hide in the same apartment.⁹^•⁷ The Japanese film database Kungfu Tube reports costume costs alone of 4 to 5 million Hong Kong dollars, an amount it describes as enough to complete an average Hong Kong film.²

A changed cast. Neither Sammo Hung nor Yuen Biao returned from the first film; reviewers report both were busy shooting Eastern Condors (1987), and critics commonly cite their absence as a reason the sequel falls short of its predecessor.¹⁰ The action direction was handled by Chan and his stunt team, the Jackie Chan Stunt Team (成家班).²

Action and reception

Unlike the first film, which is anchored by a single famous stunt, Chan's fall from a clock tower, Project A II distributes its action across many smaller fights and chases woven into the plot, building to a roughly 20-minute final chase that moves from rooftops through an aviary to a multi-story produce market, with a Buster Keaton falling-house reference.⁹ The DVD Journal's reviewer judged the film one of Chan's very best on that basis, while the Rotten Tomatoes critics' consensus notes that nothing in it quite equals the first film's clock-tower sequence.⁹^•¹

Reception has been generally positive but divided on the plotting. The Tomatometer stands at 73 percent from 11 reviews, with an audience score of 66 percent from more than 5,000 ratings.¹ IMDb users give it 7.0/10 from about 13,000 ratings.⁴ Some critics find the interweaving of corrupt cops, vice lords, freedom fighters, imperial agents, and pirates overcomplicated; a Gone With The Twins review scored it 3/10 for spending too much time on the character groups, while Matt Brunson called it "that rare sequel that nearly matches its predecessor beat for beat."¹ A Letterboxd reviewer found the film technically far ahead of its predecessor, with fully realized period streets and high-society interiors.¹¹

Versions and home video

The film exists in multiple cuts. The 88 Films 4K Ultra HD collection released in October 2024 includes the 107-minute Hong Kong cut and the 98-minute export cut, the latter with a unique English dub, both restored from the original 35 mm camera negatives in Dolby Vision/HDR10.¹² Earlier releases varied in length as well: Apple TV lists 1 hour 41 minutes,⁵ the American Film Institute lists 101 minutes,³ and a Japanese Pioneer DVD ran 102 minutes.¹³ The film carries a PG-13 rating in the United States.¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Franchise and series entries as standalone works › Action, thriller, and crime series film entries › Entries released in the 1980s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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