MOVIE REVIEW : Kung Fu Fighting and Fun in ‘Super Cop’ : Jackie Chan’s sense of humor and his martial arts wizardry are on display as a Hong Kong cop on a dangerous mission.

To watch Jackie Chan, Hong Kong’s king of kung fu comedy, in the fresh and exhilarating “Super Cop” (at the Monica 4-Plex) is like watching Douglas Fairbanks Sr. or one of the silent era clowns in one of their biggest hits. A whirling dervish with a Beatles mop top and an impish grin, the boyish Chan is a one-man Cirque du Soleil, and “Super Cop” shows off both his sense of humor and his acrobatic martial arts wizardry just as effectively as “Safety Last” served Harold Lloyd seven decades ago.

“Super Cop” is as topical as tomorrow’s headlines but gets back to the basics of discovering what can happen when you turn loose an athletic, charismatic star, backed by a clever plot and firm direction, and then capture his every move and expression with virtuoso cinematography and editing. When Chan, with his sunny personality, tilts at life’s comic absurdities he’s doing what Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy did long ago.

A fearless, devil-may-care Hong Kong cop, Chan is the inevitable choice for a highly dangerous mission. He’s to be sent to China as an undercover agent to retrieve from a prison labor camp a gangster named Panther (Yuen Wah), who is in turn to lead Chan to Panther’s Hong Kong-based older brother Chaibat (Ken Tsang), a drug lord so mighty that the authorities believe that his capture would diminish the Southeast Asian drug trade by half. Chan’s adventures lead him to a secret jungle compound along the border between Thailand and Cambodia and culminate in a whirlwind chase through Kuala Lumpar--what a beautiful city!--involving a helicopter, every kind of street vehicle and finally a train.

Arriving in Canton, Chan meets his match in his new boss, a People’s Republic of China secret agent (Michelle Khan) who’s as elegant as she is skilled in martial arts--and lots more disciplined than Chan. They’re a terrific team, and the whole business of extricating Panther from the prison camp, a coal-mining site, is as much a cliffhanger as a chapter ending in the serial “The Perils of Pauline.” But it’s just a prologue to all the nonstop action and comedy that follow.

Chan and Yeoh play with just enough tongue-in-cheekery: The humor is often broad but never lapses into burlesque. Joining the fun in the final reel is beautiful Maggie Cheung as Chan’s lively girlfriend, a tour guide who arrives in Kuala Lumpar at the very wrongest moment possible.

Chan, who co-executive produced, director Stanley Tong and their cast and crew recall what Hollywood has largely forgotten: how to make pure escapist entertainment that’s fast, light and unpretentious. “Super Cop” (Times-rated Family, suitable for all ages except the very young) and other Hong Kong pictures like it rely, out of economic prudence, on making imaginative use of the full resources of the medium rather than relying on mega-buck production design and gadgetry. (The film’s extensive use of colorful and far-flung authentic locations are in fact a key appeal.)

Since the film’s full title is “Police Story III: Super Cop,” let’s hope that the Monica 4-Plex will show the first two installments.

‘Super Cop’

Jackie Chan: Chen Chia-chun

Michelle Khan: Special Agent Yang

Maggie Cheung: May

Yuen Wah: Panther

A Rim Film Distributors release. Director and martial arts director Stanley Tong. Producers Willie Chan, Edward Tang. Executive producers Leonard Ho, Jackie Chan. Screenplay Tang, Filre Ma, Lee Wai-yee. Cinematographer Lam Kwok-wah. Editors Cheung Yiu-ling, Cheung Kar-fei. Costumes Hung Wei-chuk. Music Lee Chung-shing. Art director Wong Yue-man. In Cantonese, with English and Mandarin subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

Times-rated Family (suitable for all ages except very young children).