Speaking in conversation at the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong director and producer Stanley Tong (“Rumble in the Bronx”) traced the unlikely, injury-filled route that led him from stunt work to one of the most consequential collaborations in Jackie Chan’s career.
Tong began at the beginning, recalling how he first entered the film industry not behind a camera, but directly inside the action. After meeting Bruce Lee at age 11 through his brother-in-law, an actor, Tong began training in martial arts and gymnastics before becoming a stuntman in 1980. “I broke my shoulders, my ribs, my back, and my kneecap,” he said. “It’s not easy work. I had many stitches. My ankles got twisted many times on both sides.”
After a severe shoulder injury, Tong said his mother pushed him to leave stunt work altogether. “She said, ‘Stanley, get a new job,’” he recalled. Instead, he followed advice to shift into production roles as a way to learn filmmaking inside out, starting with script supervisor, which the veteran director says allowed him to follow “every shot, every scene, every dialogue.” He added, “You’re right there watching how the director talks to the actor. This is a tip for anybody.”
Tong quietly continued doing stunt work to support himself while progressing through nearly every department, including assistant director, screenwriter, production manager and camera operator, before becoming a stunt coordinator in 1986, the same year he first trained Michelle Yeoh.
Reflecting on his ambitions, Tong said directing was not always the initial goal. “In Hong Kong at the time, a stunt coordinator was more powerful than the director,” he said. “You’ve got all the stuntmen behind you. You go everywhere, you feel more safe.” But after reaching that position, he realized directing, and eventually producing was the only way to fully shape a film.
That realization set the stage for a defining moment: being handed the script for “Police Story 3: Supercop,” starring Chan. Tong recalled walking into a studio meeting where, in a single day, he met Chan, studio executives, and the film distributor. “When I go back in the afternoon, they give me the script of ‘Police Story 3,’” he said.
Turning to his collaboration with Chan, Tong admitted he was overwhelmed. “They said, ‘You be the director,’ and I said, ‘What about Jackie’s team?’ They said, ‘We won’t use it, just you,’” he recalled. “I didn’t reply for five days. I was very scared.”
Tong ultimately accepted after studying Chan’s films and recognizing a fundamental problem with the existing script, which centered on a gun-heavy robbery on Hong Kong streets. “We don’t have permission to shoot guns in Hong Kong,” Tong said. “The police won’t block the road. The producer and production manager could go to jail.”
Because “Police Story” entries one and two were already iconic, Tong felt repeating the same approach would be pointless. “If I shot ‘Police Story 3’ as it is, I don’t think I can do anything better than that,” he said. “So I told my boss, ‘Can I change the script?’ It was brave to ask.”
Tong proposed relocating the film to a location where authorities would allow helicopters, large-scale stunts and weapons. “Jackie deserved to have the biggest story,” he said. He also pushed to cast Yeoh as a true action co-lead. “In Jackie’s movies, you’ve never seen the girl fight,” Tong said. “So I talked to Jackie. Jackie liked the idea. The boss likes the idea.” From there, Tong said, the film was rebuilt from the ground up around that shift.
The rewritten “Police Story 3: Supercop” became a milestone, earning Chan his first Hong Kong Film Award for best actor and opening doors internationally. Looking back, Tong said the film’s impact came not from its scale, but from working within constraints. “As a filmmaker, you want to make dreams come true,” he said. “But you have to think about how to get through all these hurdles.”
