The Shinjuku Incident: A very dark departure from your standard Jackie Chan flick (and deliberately so, from what I‘ve seen and read). Gone is the trademark humor and stunt work (very little chop socky in the film at all) as Chan plays Nick, a Chinese illegal immigrant in Japan who, against his better nature, descends into crime in an effort to be legitimate. Nick arrives in Japan searching for both his fiancee who disappeared and his good friend Jie. Once there, Nick and the other immigrants lives come in violent collision with local criminal gangs including the Yakuza and triads from Taiwan. Chan’s usual goofy persona is gone as Nick is much more conflicted and even kills people to get ahead. This feels like various American crime films about new arrivals using crime to survive, thriving at it, and then resulting in their downfall. The violence is graphic (various dismemberments, some of which looks incredibly fake), the tone grim, and it has a very downbeat ending (though it’s typical of the genre). If you are looking for fun, stunt-laden Jackie, this ain’t it. That’s isn’t to say it’s a bad movie. I think Chan does very good in his serious role, though the film is a bit on the long side. Woodchuck sez, “Not your standard Chan.”
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