Shinjuku Incident [Blu-ray] [2009]

Shinjuku Incident isn't your regular Jackie Chan movie - no big acrobatic stunts, no comedy setpieces but instead a story-led drama that relies more on Jackie Chan's acting skills than it does on his athleticism. But although he's a much better dramatic actor than he's given credit for (as Crime Story showed) and this drama is definitely a big improvement on his recent turkeys without actually being a great film, it's not quite the great breakthrough it could have been. In some ways it's a fairly average but decently executed morality tale, with Chan's illegal immigrant going to Japan to find his long missing fiancé and taking on underpaid dirty jobs before discovering she's married a Yakuza boss and finding himself on the first rungs of a life of crime with various petty scams. One very convenient coincidence later and he's agreeing to kill in exchange for running the Shinjuku district and, as if that doesn't outrage the less than racially progressive old school Yakuza members enough, in a somewhat more unlikely plot development, trying to run the area without crime as a mutual help association. Unfortunately, while he's reluctant to commit to crime fulltime, his friends aren't, with inevitably tragic results...

While the Japanese location adds novelty, the story isn't exactly overburdened with originality, making it perhaps more interesting for Chan fans who get to see him do all the things the ever conscious of his role model status star refused to do onscreen for years: playing a villain, cold-bloodedly murdering people and even having a brief sex scene. It's inevitable that he'll see the error of his ways and pay the price (the film also makes a case against illegal immigration even if it is played as a 90s period piece), which may make the film seem somewhat soft and rather moralistic to Western audiences, but it's perhaps best seen as a transitional effort from a star who realises he is getting too old for the stunts that made his fame and needs to find character roles if he's to stay in front of the cameras as well as behind them. Sadly for much of the first half of the film he's a little too blank and anonymous, though there are moments that show what he's capable of - the scene where he's finally reunited with his fiancé is a remarkably expressive bit of underplaying - though it's in the second half that he finally seems to really find the character as the dramatic opportunities increase. Sadly the underplaying doesn't extend to Daniel Wu as an initially nervous friend whose attempts at an honest life go horribly wrong: while he's more restrained than usual for the first two thirds of the film he goes into his typical wild overacting mode when his character goes downhill at high speed. Much more impressive are Naoto Takenaka sympathetic Japanese cop, Masaya Kato's smooth Yakuza and Xu Jing Lei and Fan Bing Bing as the women in Chan's new life, while Lam Suet provides a familiar face for Hong Kong film fans as one of Chan's gang.

One Night in Mongkok director Derek Yee shows a much better grasp of his material here, throwing in some impressive visuals and a particularly striking opening sequence of immigrants huddled on a beach near a wrecked ship, while co-star Kar Lok Chin's fight choreography is deliberately realistically clumsy and brutish, with Chan convincingly hiding his martial arts training and avoiding big showcase stunts - the film's most memorable act of violence involves a machete and a hand. It's not a great film, but it is a good one: it's just best not too expect too much too soon from Chan's new direction.

The Hong Kong 2-disc release from Joy Sales isn't bad either. Though most of the extras (2 alternate scenes from a censored version, making of featurette and trailers) could have probably fit on one disc instead of two, they're all English-friendly, as is the film (though the English subtitles could be bigger). The UK DVD includes a decent selection of extras as well as a dubbed English soundtrack with Chan providing the voice for his own character for once.

'Shinjuku Incident' is a Chinese crime-drama, which released in 2009 to critical acclaim and box-office success. The movie is produced by Jackie Chan who also stars in it.

The movie centres around Jackie Chan's character (nicknamed Steelhead in the movie) who enters Shinjuku city in Japan illegally in search of his fiancée, Xiu Xiu (Xu Jinglei). On arriving in Japan he meets up with fellow Chinese immigrants and becomes involved with traditional organized crime syndicates there.

Before I continue, all Chan fans, this is not your normal Chan feature. This movie does not contain Chan's trademark light-hearted comedy or martial arts and is not suitable for family veiwing. I've grown up watching Chan movies that have always been clean maintaining his 'CLEAN GUY' image, which he has publicly stated that he's conscious of. On this occassion Chan portrays shades of grey in a dark and gritty movie, indicating that he is changing his image by doing serious drama. Chan ventures into the dark side for this movie. How does he do it, well, watch the movie and prepare to be shocked as you will witness him partaking in some scenes that he hasn't done before.

'Shinjuku Incident' contains heavy emotional drama, betrayal, action (occassional), violence and competent performances from the lead actors. The movie starts well introducing the characters and the story. It then successfully concentrates on the drama and ends in an effective manner.

The movie is interesting, however drags when it becomes slow-paced at times resulting in the momentum being affected. The other flaw is the basic and predictable plot.

The movie works as a result of gripping emotional drama, good acting and a nail-biting tense final twenty minutes, which I thought was brilliant. The finale consists of high drama, exciting action, engrossing performances and important of all, it's unpredictable.

The performances of all the actors are excellent. The show-stealer is Jackie Chan who produces his finest performance and in the process manages to change his image, although I'd still like to see him making comedies.

The direction provided by Derek Yee is top-notch as he extracts fine performances from the actors, especially Chan and makes the drama work. He should be applauded for the way he executed the final twenty minutes, its just rivetting.

The background music score provided by Peter Kam is moving.

The picture and sound quality of the DVD is good. There is an English language option in the DVD, which some viewers will prefer as opposed to the original language. The quality of the English dubbing is average to above average.

To round it all off, it's a good quality movie with an anti-hero in the form of a different Jackie Chan.

'Shinjuku Incident' is gripping entertainment.

Well. This was not what I was expecting at all. Forget your average stunt driven Kung Fu flick, The Shinjuku Incident sees Jackie Chan take on a much more serious role.

I'd compare this film to something akin to Scarface or the equally brilliant A Prophet, with all three films based around an immigrant's rise to power, up through the criminal ranks, to become top dog.

In fact, this film mirrors Scarface in many, many ways. This time however, we start not with Cuban's arriving in a strange land by boat, but Chinese immigrants being washed up on shore.

In a similar fashion to the now infamous Tony Montana, Jakie (or Steelhead) first tries to work legitimately but when that fails, he take matters into his own hands and starts working for criminal gangs. And, just as Scarface did, Jackie then tries to carve out a place for himself and his Chinese followers in a hostile land by navigating his way up the Yakuza ranks using politics and violence.

This was a very, very good gangster flick. It really was Scarface with a Yakuza twist. Jackie Chan perhaps lacked the acting chops to do the film justice, but don't let that put you off as he does OK. It was a brilliant film that borrowed heavily from lots of western gangster films (I saw touches of Carlito's Way in there too) to bring us something totally unique.

An Eastern twist on our old favourites was enough to make a tried and tested formula feel totally fresh and new. M16s are replaced with meat cleavers and samurai swords and Cuban and Colombian cartels replaced with Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean gangs.

Arms are chopped off, alliances are forged and everything starts to unravel as Jackie's grip on power starts to weaken. If you're a fan of either A Prophet or Scarface, you should love this film. It's essentially the same in many ways but with Triads in the Land of the Rising Sun. And instead of catch phrases like 'Chi Chi, get the yayo!' you hear that '30% percent it fate... the rest is a battle'.