Shinjuku Incident (2012)

It's fast-paced, tense, dark and bloody.

To some degree, it faithfully and vividly portraits the gang lives of some Chinese illegal immigrants in Japan. For example, it shows them making money buy selling fake phone cards, stealing from gambling machine, cleaning sewers, sorting garbage in recyclable and non-recyclable stuff, etc.

The ending is predictable.

It gives enough time to develop some good character development.

This is not a typical movie by Jackie Chan. There's no joke. It's not a comedy-action movie.

It's the BEST drama-acting of Jackie Chan so far. All his previous attempts at this are bad jokes. It's Definitely Worth Watching..

I became a Jackie Chan fan almost 30 years ago (while living in Japan). I've collected probably over seventy of his movies.

This is an interesting, unexpected and out-of-character film for him. No humor. No martial arts. No outtakes. Graphic violence, and (some) gore. The main character is an average guy, a Chinese illegal immigrant to Japan, driven by desperation to a life of crime.

It is stated that three years were spent researching the history of illegal immigration to some parts of Japan; and the involvement of the Yakuza (Japanese organized crime). It is a fascinating expose of the way dishonesty, cruelty, immorality and violence may develop in any group of people trying to survive in an alien environment; crime as self-defense and self-preservation.

Most interesting to me, was Jackie Chan's narrative during the "Special Features." He is, as I have always thought, a good man with an optimistic (even simplistic) world view; and he spoke from a viewpoint of innocence, even naivete. Plainly, he was shocked and dismayed by the human stories he had uncovered. He talks about his research into these areas of illegal immigration and crime; how the "bad people" (human traffickers) lie to the aspiring immigrants, telling them that another country (Japan, even America) is better than their own country, but "this is not true, stay where you are, you will at least have your friends and family around you." Without knowing the language, illegal immigrants cannot speak to anyone and must live on the underbelly of society, stealing or (at the very least) being taken advantage of, to survive. He also spoke of how the women are mistreated in such circumstances, often forced to become prostitutes; and this seemed to hurt him to his heart. Even when the illegals learn the language of their new country, they live in fear all the time.

The basic message here (as it often is, in his movies) is, "Do the RIGHT thing." I think he tried to make clear how good intentions can be subverted, and how wrong actions will lead (eventually, perhaps even inevitably) to a terrible end. In other words -crime does NOT pay. (And -spoiler alert -pretty much everyone of any worth in this movie, dies.)

While (I confess) I initially missed the usual martial arts, physical comedy and his signature humor, this film kept me riveted to the very end. It was -surprisingly, in this cynical day and age -a movie with a moral. It was in fact the most thoughtful one I've seen this year. (And I actually liked it better than "The Karate Kid.")

Thanks, Jackie. You did good.

P.S. And although this wasn't a martial arts movie, I think I did recognize some of his old crew in the cast. OK, it wasn't Sammo Hung or Yuen Biao... but that guy who got his throat cut near the end, I'm pretty sure was a familiar face. Good to see.

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There is certainly an auteuristic streak in the small amount of cinema I have seen from Derek Yee. His previous film Protégé (2007) dealt with the drug trade in a didactic manner which is similar to the approach this film takes in dealing with illegal immigrants in Japan. Both this and Protégé have a curious and sometimes overacting performance from Daniel Wu (Rob-B-Hood). They also both involve severing an arm. But it is his didactic approach that annoys me a bit in this film. I could not quite verbalize it until watching the extras in which Jackie Chan states that the message of the film was that of "be happy where you are" which is, of course, simplistic and ultimately deadly if you are living in a repressive regime. However, I could forgive a bit of lesson-oriented cinema (I did in Protégé), but there were other issues on the forefront that lessoned my enjoyment of the film.

The biggest issue I think some people will have this is that they will be expecting a "Jackie Chan" film. It is not. I admire Jackie for extending his reach into cinema to take on a decidedly un-charismatic role though this is nowhere near the first time with Crime Story or New Police Story for roles in this vein and for a true antagonistic performance you can go way back to The Killer Meteors (1976). I think his performance is good. I did not think his character, along with several others, was well thought out though.

Jackie stars as "Steelhead" an illegal immigrant in Japan who is looking for his lost love Xiu-Xiu (Xu Jing-lei: The Warlords) who has disappeared at the same time he is trying to just survive. While this is a May-December relationship (she is much younger than he is), nothing is said about this in the film. I am not sure if he was portraying a much younger man (especially due to flashbacks of them younger which would put them close to the same age) or ego was involved or there is just a strange miscasting. He befriends several immigrants like Lily (Fan Bing-bing: Flash Point), Jie (Daniel Wu) who only wants to be a chestnut vendor and Hong Kong Boy (Chin Kar-lok: Protégé) and eventually has a relationship with Lily in a vastly underused plotline that gets exploited in the end that left me vastly unsatisfied.

Meanwhile two big things happen: he saves the life of Inspector Kitano (Takenaka Naoto) who is in charge of enforcing immigration and he also saves the life of Eguchi Toshinari (Kato Masaya) who happens to have a high position in the Yakuza and coincidently is also married to his former sweetheart Xiu-Xiu. The sheer coincidence of Jackie saving several lives seemed a too fortuitous but also those scenes go completely against some of the decisions he makes later in the film. It is like Yee wanted him to do evil things to show the depths someone can go to when they are pushed to the brink, but his character remains almost ignorant of them even though he committed some heinous atrocities in the name of helping out himself (to procure a "legal" Japanese ID) and his fellow immigrants. Soon you will see a rise of Scarface proportions with Steelhead serving directly under Eguchi as well as with his Steelhead's friends most notably Jie who turns into a drug using anime looking character.

The strength of the film is in particular scenes such as the plethora of issues that are presented to the illegal immigrant from not speaking the language, locals who do not want you there, loneliness, poverty and odd jobs like cleaning the sewers that no one else wants to do. This is a familiar situation to many countries. I do wish that a bit more was spent on why they wanted to leave in the first place. The film had such promise early on that the varied contrivances of the plots and characters started to get more and more overbearing. I think part of the reason was that the director Derek Yee had been working on this for so long and wanted to put so much of what he learned about the topic in one film that a compendium of characters was shoved into Jackie Chan and others that so much seemed contrived.

If you have seen Protégé and liked it, then it is possible that you will like this as well. If you are specially looking for a stereotypical Jackie film you will most likely dislike it. The action here is presented more realistic so everything appears clumsier. There are times when you expect Jackie to break out and use weapons or handle multiple bad guys with ease, but that is not a fault of the film and is more my preconception. I have read positive reviews on this film (I disagree with them) though most do tend to talk about "plot problems" and several seem to give this a passing mark solely because of the good performance from Chan. While I was happy enough with his performance the myriad of character and plot inconsistencies for me was the biggest reason I am giving this movie a mediocre review.

The Sony R1 release of it is good. Be warned there are three different English subtitles. One for the dubbed released, one for the dubbed release added with hard-of-hearing and one for the Chinese version. It technically is not completely dubtitles, but it did not always vary that much from the English soundtrack. I easily prefer the original audio track because you get to hear the many different languages used that are lost on the English dub. There are two extras: selected scenes commentary with Jackie Chan (9m) and Say Hello to the Bad Guy (10m) which is a good extra that talks about how long Derek was working on this, the suicide of an actor (not mentioned) who was going to play the role in the film, why the film lost the Mainland China market and various tidbits that make it worth of a watch. Both are short and easily worth the watch to learn more about this film.

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I already bought this Blu-ray from HKflix.com before it was even for sale on Amazon. The story line is somewhat predictable, a rag-to-riches plot with the usual backstabbing going on, while Jackie looks for his girlfriend. The video quality was very good. The acting is good also, and Jackie doesn't seem to have many lines to speak, mostly his character makes a few speeches and almost no martial arts scenes, just good old fashioned acting from Jackie from beginning to end.

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Shinjuku is one of the major commercial centers of Tokyo. Jackie Chan's new film "Shinjuku Incident," set in the downtown area of the capital of Japan, is a change of pace for the star known for his death-defying actions. And the change is drastic.

In a 2009 film "Shinjuku Incident" ("San suk si gin") Jackie Chan plays a hard-working tractor repairman Steelhead living in the countryside of the mainland China. His childhood friend and sweetheart Xiu Xiu (Jinglei Xu) went to Japan more than 10 years ago, but he has lost contact with her. So Steelhead decides to immigrate illegally to Japan to know what really happened to his missing love.

Steelhead manages to get to Shinjuku, Tokyo, where he is welcomed by his countrymen including his old friend Jie (Daniel Wu). While looking for Xiu Xiu and ways to survive as illegal laborer, Steelhead gets entangled in a web of intrigue and violence after the run-ins with the local gangsters ruling the underworld of Shinjuku district.

[NO ORDINARY JACKIE CHAN FILM] This is a Jackie Chan film, but surely not his usual action flick. Here Jackie doesn't kick, punch, or jump from the top of a bus. Keep this in mind, he never does. Instead of playing a likable hero of justice, Jackie Chan is a very ordinary person. Though his non-action acting is quite impressive, some fans might be shocked to see his character committing some serious crimes. His fans know Jackie Chan maintains his strict control over his image on screen his heroic characters might "defeat" villains, but not "kill," and a big no-no is sleeping with a woman. In "Shinjuku Incident" he breaks all these self-imposed rules.

"Shinjuku Incident" is directed by veteran Tung-Shing Yee from Hong Kong, whose works as director include noir-style crime thriller "One Nite in Mongkok." In fact the film is more like a Hong Kong noir. "Shinjuku Incident" has several action scenes, but they are violent, bloody and most of all brutal. Don't expect Jackie's comical kung-fu actions with clever use of props. You will never have one.

The film's slightly complicated story is engaging enough, but some characters are a bit unbelievable or even stereotyped. Several episodes about Inspector Kitano (Naoto Takenaka) are too good to be true, and some of the characters (gangsters/yakuza/politicians) are stock types derived from other gangster/yakuza films.

Again I say this is a change of pace for Jackie Chan and you may not like what you see in his latest effort. The film is flawed, but still impressive with the strong acting from the leading star.

[TRIVIA]

1) The stranded cargo boat in the opening scene is a real one. Tung-Shing Yee heard the news of this stranded Russian cargo and quickly he changed the filming schedule to use it as background before it was removed.

2) Though part of the film was really shot in Shinjuku, most of the main actions were actually shot in Kobe City, about 570 kilometers (350 miles) west of Tokyo.

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