This film is NOT a true sequel. It's only loosely a continuation...

Jackie Chan's First Strike (as it is called in my native, Great Britain) may canonically be linked to the 'Police Story' movies, but while it's a superbly made action film, it feels kind of out of place in the chronology.

First of all, the character Chan plays is in fact supposedly his Kevin/Jackie role yet again, but he seems funnier as opposed to how serious he was, back when he was trying to stop the bad guys in the first two films. 'Supercop' (aka Police Story 3: Supercop in some territories) omitted the Police Story name on the DVD packaging, and if it wasn't for May and 'Uncle' Bill Wong being in it again, it wouldn't feel so much like a sequel to 2. To be honest, I don't really like 3 and I feel the plot was boring, slower paced, and hard to keep up with. The stunts are rather spectacular, that I'll agree with, but I just didn't think much of the general story.

Also, Chan did briefly appear in the spin off, Once a Cop. That film focused not on Chan, but on Michelle Yeoh's character. However, it is confusingly also known as simply Supercop, despite certain release names, including Supercop 2 correctly verifying it indeed took place after the first Supercop. Chan reprised his Inspector Chan role for a silly and unnecessary cameo, which was promoted as if it were a major part for him.

But 'First Strike' just doesn't feel like a buddy cop film at all, and more along the lines of a James '007' Bond entry instead. There are some similarities to Police Story, like how he gets framed for murder, and how he does dangerous stunts, and follows suspects around, and it has his "uncle" in it again. But for the most part, you wouldn't think it was even meant to be a sequel. It was in my mother's collection for years on tape, but we weren't aware it was allegedly the fourth film because of its title and few similarities to be found.