Review of Shinjuku Incident (2009) by Richard C — 05 Aug 2009

After falling in love with Yee's last movie the Protege, I immediately "obtained" this movie for my enjoyment as soon as it is available on the interweb...In my opinion, the Protege was one of the best Chinese movies I have seen in the last few years...Althought I didn't watch too many...:).

This movie I would say is on par with the Protege.

SPOILER WARNING.

I really like the dark tone throughout the movie. It does not have any gimmicky plot twists, just a simple tale of a group of people trying to survive the harsh environment of living in a foreign country as immigrants. The theme is very generic - Human beings will always be human beings. They are selfish and never seem to get enough.

My favourite character is the character played by Daniel Wu, as this guy is a tragic character. The movie shows the natural progression of how someone can change from a really nice guy to a bully after just one tragic event. In the end when all hell breaks loose, he finally discovered that he is just wearing this bully mask to protect his insecurity and in fact he never did change...I like, I like! The death scene is also epic (I am not going to give this away)...One of the best death scenes ever IMO...

Jackie Chan delivered a good acting performance in his standards but he is not the main draw in my opinion. I found that his character is quite contradictory to his belief...On the one hand, he made the choice to do whatever it takes to survive, but in the end he chose to op out of it and be a good person...However, whatever happened, happened. He can't change it. Although he eventually got what he deserved but the movie seemed to want to portray him as a hero.

This movie is not as violent as I would expect. There seems to be an addiction to chopping off someone's hands but I didn't seem to see any blood...The scenes are so fake looking. I am not complaining, just stating the fact...I know I shouldn't be too picky about a non-Hollywood movie when it comes to FX...

All in all, I really enjoyed this movie! Way to go Yee Tung Shing!