Bullet Points: The Prisoner (1990)

Going into 1990’s The Prisoner, here is what I knew and thought I knew about the movie…

I knew the movie starred Jackie Chan, the title implied that it had something to do with a prison and the synopsis about a cop who goes undercover in order to infiltrate a deadly prison where a team of mercenaries is being assembled confirmed the prison setting.

Looking at the cover art and reading the synopsis, I assumed The Prisoner was to Jackie Chan, what Death Warrant was to Jean-Claude Van Damme and it didn’t take too long after hitting play that I knew I had assumed wrong…

• Report to the Commissioner: Tony Leung is the actual star of the movie. Tony plays Andy, the undercover cop who infiltrates the corrupt prison. One minute, Andy is hand picked by the police commissioner (AKA his future father-in-law) for a big investigation while the two have dinner, the next Andy is making out with his girlfriend in her car, the next the two lovers witness the police commissioner’s murder and then last but not least watch as the assassin who killed the commissioner blows up via car bomb. Now there’s not much left of the assassin after being blown up, but the cops manage to salvage a finger and get the print off of it and that’s when Andy finds out that the finger belonged to a man, who according to prison records, was executed by firing squad and no longer among the living.
• Undercover: Obviously the prison is supplying false information, but why? The best way to find out is to get on the inside and that’s when Andy picks a fight with some guys and assaults them with two soda cans in the pockets of his jacket and as a result lands himself behind bars. Andy gets the lay of the land as he is escorted to his cell, once in his cell he meets his cellmate Charlie but before he can get settled in Andy learns that he is going to have his fighting skills tested against the reigning prison champion… and Andy fails miserably getting his ass kicked in definitive fashion.

• Breakout: The movie then shifts its focus to John (Sammo Hung). His son’s birthday is coming up and John is planning on breaking out of prison so he can spend the day with his son… John’s plan involves a little Iron Chef like action, then disguising himself as a prison guard the best he can, considering the prison guard John takes out is at least 3 sizes smaller than him. John accomplishes his goal and does get to see his son before the authorities track him down and haul his ass back to prison, where he is punished severely for his actions, but not enough to prevent John from trying to escape again as the movie progresses.

• I Was Told Jackie Chan Was In This Movie: Jackie Chan shows up at the 23 minute mark, he plays Steve a professional billiards player who ends up pissing off some Triad types when he refuses to “take a dive”. This leads to a skirmish that lands Steve’s model girlfriend in critical condition at the hospital and forces Steve to enter the world of high stakes gambling in order to raise the funds he’s going to need for the transplant that his girlfriend is now going to need to live. Steve wins big, but when he refuses the gangster he was playing with the chance to win his money back, another scuffle ensues and Steve ends up accidentally killing the gangster… who we learn was the brother of Boss Lee (Andy Lau). Steve lands in prison. Later when the hit Boss Lee orders on Steve doesn’t happen, Boss Lee allows himself to get arrested so he can take care of the man who killed his brother personally.

• Lucas With the Lid Off: At this point the last thing The Prisoner needed was another major character introduced, so it makes perfect sense that Jimmy Wang Yu’s Lucas is introduced. Lucas was in solitary confinement up until this point and it is clear by his return to gen pop that he is something of a prison hero and is clearly no favorite of the warden. There were so many sub plots going on in the movie that it really felt like this whole thing would have worked better as a series, Hong Kong’s answer to Oz perhaps. But then out of nowhere the stories of Andy, John, Steve and Boss Lee all come together as they are all seemingly executed but instead are selected by the warden as assassins to take out a drug lord… but the warden didn’t realize Andy was well aware of what happens to the warden’s assassins once they have completed their mission.

The Prisoner was one of those movies where as the end credits rolled I could not help but wonder what in the hell I just watched. There was a lot to process in the 97 minute U.S. cut I watched on Prime Video (apparently the worst of the three cuts of this movie that exist), there was a ton of star power with the movie feeling like a Hong Kong All-Star Game so it was never boring, but something was definitely off about the whole thing.

Doing some minor research into the film and there was apparently a lot of behind the scenes drama leading up to the movie and there was a reason this movie featured so many heavy hitters from the Hong Kong movie scene in it… some may have been involved as a favor, others may have been forced to be involved and if that’s true, a movie about how The Prisoner came to be would probably be a more entertaining movie than The Prisoner itself.

Before your sentence is up, check out these Bonus Bullet Points…

• AKA: The Prisoner is also known as Island of Fire.
• Memorable Quote: “You’re the kind of guy that can fart, but doesn’t have the shit to back it up.” – Lucas to the warden
• If You Ever: …wanted to see Sammo Hung knock out Rambo, then The Prisoner is the movie for you. I should clarify that in this case Rambo was the name of one of the prison guard dogs and not Sylvester Stallone.
• Masturbatory Quote: “Next time I fuck my hand, I’m gonna be thinking about her.”