2nd April- Evan, Melissa, Lydia and Avril
3rd April- Mable Soe and Ben F
This was how yesterday started... I met up with Terence and Desmond at VivoCity. Initially we planned to watch "12 Rounds", but because the timing was rather late at 1600 hrs, we decided to watch "The Shinjuku Incident" instead, since the earliest timing was at 1540 hrs and it was the opening day. It is indeed quite worth the watch. After which, I went off for sculpting class in the evening.
If any of you Jackie Chan fans think that this is gonna consist of his usual comic-timing stunts, that's where you're wrong. This film is much more sombre and darker than any film that Jackie has starred in... matter of fact, this film is produced by Jackie himself (with 95% drama and 5% action). This film is deemed too shocking for release in mainland China which lacks an age-restriction system.
In the early 1990s, a tractor mechanic from China nicknamed Steelhead (Jackie Chan) enters Japan illegally, in search of his girlfriend Xiu Xiu (Xu Jinglei). Steelhead and his friend, Jie (Daniel Wu) meet in the busy Shinjuku district of Tokyo and take manual labouring jobs to earn money. When Steelhead finds out that Xiu Xiu has married a Japanese Yakuza leader named Eguchi (Kato Masaya), he decides to remain in Japan. To obtain citizenship, he agrees to work for Eguchi as a killer, but in the process quickly becomes used to the power. Soon he has become embroiled so deeply in the ways of the yakuza that he realizes there is no turning back, especially when the rival yakuza clans start to ambush his brotherhood.
This is a good depiction on how power can corrupt someone and change him into something entirely different. Daniel Wu's character Ah Jie was a cowardly man who got his chestnut cart stolen, got disfigured by the head of an underworld clan and got his right hand chopped off... about one year later, he became a gang leader dressed up like a ghost and wearing a prosthetic right hand, and he went to the extent of ordering his gang to beat up the boyfriend of the girl he once liked.
As for Steelhead, even a kind and humble man like himself is willing to kill various yakuza members in order to take charge of certain provinces and obtain citizenship in Japan, oblivious to the fact that he had put himself and his brothers into bigger problems. But he still maintains contact with the Japanese detective he had saved from drowning at the start of the film. It is due to the choice Steelhead made that he and his entire brotherhood (including Eguchi) would evenutally be wiped out within one night.
I rate this film 8 out of 10 stars, strong plot and good character development. Be warned though... you might find yourself laughing away when a triad boss (the one who disfigured Ah Jie and later got his arm chopped off by Steelhead) mutters the all-too familiar vulgarity "KNNB" :-X
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