Trivia

So much glass was used that the crew began calling the movie "Glass Story".

Jackie Chan sustained burns on his hands during the pole slide scene in the mall. The Christmas tree lights were plugged into the wall instead of a low-voltage car battery.

The scene where the villains crash through the bus window and fall onto the ground was an accident. They were really supposed to fall onto the car, but due to the air brakes of the bus, there was a pump back, creating space between the bus and the car.

In an undated interview included with the film's Criterion release, Jackie Chan estimates that his crew had already been shooting in the mall for several months. By the time they got to the pole stunt, the Police Story production was under some degree of pressure from the mall to wrap up. By the time the pole stunt was set up, the sun had begun to rise. There was going to be a lot of broken glass to clean up before the mall opened in the morning. While Chan is somewhat infamous for taking the time to get stunts right, in this instance, there was a real sense of urgency. Chan and his team did not rehearse the stunt. And as if the stakes weren't high enough, there were no wires, crash mats, or safety nets. If Chan missed the pole there would be nothing to catch him or break his fall. The original plan was to power the lights with a low-voltage car battery. But, as they discovered on the day, the car battery just wasn't able to power the whole structure. So they plugged the lights into wall sockets. This meant that the voltage of the building itself could potentially electrocute Chan. To assuage Chan's understandable concern, the tech crew assured him that if anything went wrong they would simply cut the power. Chan perched on the guard rail six floors above his final destination: a prop kiosk shielded by sugar glass. He told the crew that he would give a signal before initiating the stunt ("when I nod, I'm going"). Chan was, by his own admission, rather scared. A member of the JC Stunt Team snuck a good luck totem into Chan's pocket during a hug. As Chan tells it, a crewmember mistook a nervous neck motion for the "go" signal. Someone shouted "rolling!" and the deathly quiet atrium filled with the motors of all twelve high-speed cameras. That amount of camera coverage was exceptional at the time, especially within Chan's own filmography. But they only had one shot at it. And they only had 400 feet of film. Knowing this, Chan let out a scream and jumped. By Chan's estimate, the distance from the guard rail to the pole was about eight feet, which he cleared without a running start from an unstable crouching position. During the descent, the string lights did not electrocute Chan. But they did have a different, unforeseen effect. Incandescent light bulbs are hot to the touch. They can even ignite paper and certain kinds of cloth with direct contact. The heat, coupled with the friction of the descent, resulted in second-degree burns on Chan's palms. the instant Chan hits the floor, he gets up and starts fighting. This is all the more impressive considering, as Chan relays in his autobiography, the impact of the fall dislocated his pelvis and caused a back injury that could have been paralyzing. As Chan tells it, his adrenaline was so high that the stuntman he wails on had to tell him to stop. They wrapped the shoot and had a celebratory beer (at six in the morning). Chan then made his way to the Heart of the Dragon set where he promptly crashed.

Jackie Chan was hospitalized following the stunt where he flips over the balcony and crashes through the glass and light display, as he was not breathing.