Dear Stupid American Dubbers:
I am quite frankly sick and tired of you butchering quite possibly every single film from overseas. Your inability to successfully even mildly recreate the experience as if it were in its native tongue continues to dazzle me. Even the grandest of grand films from around the world become less bearable to watch thanks to the pitiful, gut-wrenching dubbing. To further your skills in watering down all sorts of movies, you even disallow the ability for some movies to make it to the United States with a mere addition of subtitles. Is it really that hard to just ship the film with their native language and the translation on the bottom of the screen? Really? Here is a list of things you should avoid when dubbing a movie from any non-English-speaking country:
1) Do not re-edit the film. The movie is 108 minutes long because the makers wanted it to be that way. Do not chop any "unnecessary" scenes
2) Do not remove scenes that actually further explains the plot. That is stupid. Very stupid
3) Do not attempt to add any humor into the movie. Your job is to only translatenot translate and have a shot at stand-up comedy.
4) Do not add or change the soundtrack. You stupid imbeciles, why on earth is there hip-hop music in a Jackie Chan film? That's like throwing in a performance of Swan Lake during one of the intermissions in a hockey game.
5) Do not fix the sound effects. Why are you fixing the sound effects!!?!?
6) Why are we not using Chinese-Americans to help dub Chinese films!?!??
7) Stop. Changing. The. Storyline. You. Amateurs. You. Make. Me. Want. To. Throw. Something. Heavy.
8) Just don't dub the film. As a matter of fact, don't even follow these rules, because that would mean you are trying to dub. Don't do it, just allow the movie (in its entirety) to arrive here in the United States, and put it the reliable subtitles on the bottom. Please and thank you.
Despite Supercop being quite possibly the 38539th film to be ruined because of American dubbing, it remains an enjoyable film, and one that's quite different from the usual Chan fare. The film is about (after reading Wikipedia and IMDb because the dubbing sure messed that up) Chan going undercover with a beautiful agent (Michelle Yeoh) to track down a drug king.
The action is very intense, rougher than the usual Chan material; so if you can adjust your tastes, you'll be in for a wild ride. While the usual amount of well-choreographed fights are replaced by heavy action set pieces, the final half an hour will leave you absolutely breathless. If you are disappointed in the first 60 minutes, stick around for the last leg, when you'll see unbelievable stunt after unbelievable stunt. Jackie Chan's female version performs her best work here, as Yeoh combines grittiness with a hintage of sexuality that's very subtle but all-so-present.
Bottom Line: Supercop is not the best Jackie Chan work, but it still entertains and still will blow you away with some of the set pieces and amazing stuntwork involved. The typical Jackie Chan humor is replaced with intense and crazy action that extends from brutal hand-to-hand combat to guns and missiles all over the place. With that being said, the dubbing will hamper the quality of the film a lot, no matter how hard you try to avoid it. Maybe in the future we can figure out how to successfully translate movies in a way that can make everybody happy; but in the meantime we have to deal with disgusting hip-hop, terrible re-editing, bad voice work acting, and an all-around aura of obviousness that the translators didn't have a clue on what the Chinese filmmakers and Jackie Chan were trying to achieve with this film.
P.S. Stop dubbing movies. Please. Just subtitle them. Please.
