A very different Jackie Chan from what we’re used to, but do we want to see him in a serious drama?

Jackie Chan gets something of a hard time when it comes to his acting. Even his most diehard fans will happily deride his abilities, happy to forget the more dramatic elements from the Police Story series, and other fine examples like Heart Of Dragon, where Chan plays brother to Sammo Hung’s mentally challenged character.

Mind you, he’s not done himself any favours with much of his Stateside output. (Did anyone actually watch Tuxedo?) And that embarrassingly bad performance as a drunk at the beginning of New Police Story won’t have helped matters either.

Now The Shinjuku Incident could change all that, or at least chip away at audiences preconceptions. One thing’s for sure, you’ve never seen Jackie like this before.

Jackie plays Steelhead, one of hundreds of Chinese refugees washed up on Japan’s Wakasa Bay in the 90s. Originally a naive farm worker, he has come in search of his fiancé Xiu Xiu (Xu Jinglei, The Warlords, Confession of Pain, Heroic Duo) who left their remote village in China without a trace.

Steelhead finds himself amongst other Chinese refugees facing prejudice and oppression, illegal work or petty crime their only means to make a living. Old friend Jie (Daniel Wu, New Police Story, Protégé, One Nite In Mongkok, Purple Storm) shows him the ropes of this new life. But when he finds Xiu he learns she has married a minor Yakuza boss, Eguchi (Masaya Kato, Fighter in the Wind, Crying Freeman).

Steelhead starts to organise his fellow refugees, but soon a degree of success makes them more of a target for the gangsters that run the Shinjuku district. When Jie ends up scared and maimed by a local Taiwanese triad, he bargains with Eguchi to help break his friends free of being Japan’s underclass. This doesn’t come without a price, he must commit murder.

But the Yakuza have plans of their own, and will not tolerate foreigners taking over their territory. Soon Steelhead finds himself in the middle of an all-out war between the fractions, and with just one chance of redemption…

Shinjuku Incident a pretty shrewd career move for Jackie – who also executively produced this vehicle – as a deliberate departure from everything we’ve come to expect from him. Collaborating with one of Hong Kong’s darkest, most acclaimed dramatic directors Derek Yee (who also directed Chan’s son Jaycee in 2 Young), you can almost imagine them sitting down in a room somewhere, going through a check list of everything you’d least expect from Jackie Chan. Murder is just the start of it – there’s even a scene in with him in bed with a prostitute.

In fact, the only thing you won’t see are daredevil stunts or tight action choreography – which I can only commend Chan and Yee for doing. Chan is even said to have described this as ‘maybe one per cent action. Heavy drama.’ It’s a brave step and a world away from films like Gorgeous, where fight scenes were feebly written in, in order that fans were given what they expected. (Mind you, other than the literally gorgeous Shi Qi very little could save that film from being a stinker anyway.)

Chan gives a fine performance in the lead role, my only real bugbear being that, rather like Gorgeous and pretty much every film he appears in nowadays, he seems too old for the role he’s playing. He’s joined by a strong ensemble cast including Naoto Takenaka (The Happiness of the Katakuris, Ping Pong, Azumi), Chin Ka Lok (Murderer, Lust, Caution, The Avenging Fist) and the seemingly omnipresent Lam Suet.

Co-writer Chun Tin-Nam has a pretty good track record of late, including contributing to The Warlords and An Empress and the Warriors, as well as a previous attempt for Chan to be taken more seriously, 1993’s Crime Story. As with previous efforts like One Nite In Mongkok and Protégé, Yee’s script doesn’t shy away from the seedier or violent side of gang life and it’s repercussions, even if sometimes he doesn’t quite have the courage to carry them through. And like Protégé, there’s that occasional, overbearing need for him to show us how well this film has been researched, even though it can come off a bit ham-fisted.

At least Yee doesn’t overly simplify the situation. In fact the only real problem is that he paints such a rosy picture or rural China – presumably anticipating the films release there – that you wonder why these refugees would want to leave?

But will fans like it? For once Chan doesn’t seem too concerned – this is, for all intense purposes a vanity project, after all. The controversy surrounding its lack of release in Mainland China is completely Yee and Chan’s decision. Neither of them wanting to make the cuts necessary in order to pass censorship.

It might seem odd for Chan to neglect such a major part of his fan base, but ultimately this is just the sort of film he should make in order to make the transition to character acting. And lets face it, he needs to look beyond his days as an action star – he’s just getting too old for it. He just needs to find more suitable roles…

And the film’s not half bad either!

The Shinjuku Incident is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Cine Asia.

DVD details

Distributor: Cine Asia (UK)

The release from Cine Asia comes with a bonus disc stacked with revealing interviews with the cast about the film, including Jackie himself (but not director Yee); a ‘making of’ featurette; and an exhausting and rather enlightening collection of behind-the-scenes footage.

However, the deleted scenes and extended scenes promised when the release was announced, and included on the original Hong Kong DVD and Blu-rays, do not seem to be in evidence on the UK DVD.

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This entry was published by Andy H on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under Action / Thrillers, Drama, Films, Hong Kong, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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