Review: Project A is not just one of the greatest Hong Kong movies ever made – it’s one of the best movies ever made anywhere. If you haven’t seen it before, then you must be new to Asian cinema. Now go and buy Project A on DVD, watch it, treasure it, and then watch it again and again.

It’s almost sad to see Jackie Chan’s success in the west, and to know that most Americans and Europeans know the Jackie from Rush Hour and Around the World in 80 Days. To see Jackie in Project A, a movie of his own creation, is to see what makes the man a legend. This is Jackie Chan at his most energetic, inventive, heroic and loveable, starring alongside his childhood friends Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao.

After a brief establishing scene, Jackie enters the frame riding a bicycle. He leaps off it and continues to run without breaking pace, as the bike freewheels and lands in a bicycle rack. All Chan has done is enter the scene, and he is already showing off. In fact, the movie just keeps momentum for the first 45 minutes or so, moving seamlessly from one set-piece to another. One minute he is dodging chairs, bottles and plates of spaghetti in a bar brawl, the next he is being chased through the back alleys of HK on a bicycle, using brooms to joust his enemy from their bikes. Later, he takes on a bad guy in a clock tower, before falling fifty feet to the ground, in one the most famous stunts of his career.

Project A is a kung fu version of the Keystone Cops, in a flawlessly realised 30’s backdrop, Every scene has been expertly crafted by Chan to create a masterpiece in the truest sense of the word.