Critical Quickie: The Shinjuku Incident

By now Jackie Chan has produced almost twice as many duds as he has classics, so it seems that this gangster flick, set in the mean streets of 1990s Tokyo, is his most earnest attempt at redemption to date.

Gone are the trademark gape-mouthed expressions and slapstick chop-socky fight scenes – here he channels Scarface and Goodfellas (and a whole repertoire of gangster clichés) in a story about underclass Chinese immigrants burrowing deep into the Yakuza underworld.

In this flick Chan has no discernable kung fu skills, but true to form, he depicts his character as a hapless badass (in one scene he single-handedly fends off a gang of thugs attempting to mug Fan Bingbing).

Daniel Wu plays his homie above all homies in a ragtag crew of fellow Mainlanders who survive and thrive by scamming pachinko parlors and luxury good stores. Xu Jinglei is Love Interest Number One – the prototypical Dongbei country girl who eventually ends up a Yakuza mistress – and the aforementioned Fan Bingbing plays Love Interest Number Two, a “hooker with a heart of gold” whose romantic interest in our hero get dashed in a gut wrenchingly cheesy scene that hearkens back to the sappiest of 1980s Hong Kong cinema.

The Shinjiku Incident downplays kung fu theatrics in favor of guns, knives and a storyline with a subtly nationalistic bent. This is not a terrible film, but it still leaves much to be desired. For one (and typical of a lot of Hong Kong cinema), it’s laden with derivative clichés – particularly with the “insistent cop” (Takenaka Naoto) and the bit where Daniel Wu’s character morphs into a tortured villain à la Heath Ledger’s Joker. The gangsters are suitably menacing, but Xu Jinglei’s goody-two-shoes, debonaire Yakuza husband (Mayasa Kato) is completely ludicrous (especially compared to Jack Kao’s convincing portrayal of a rival Taiwan-born gangster, one of the baddest characters in the film).

Chan is not advocating yet another Sino-Japanese provocation in this film (Japan is merely a backdrop in this story, and the screenplay seems to go out of its way to make sure not all the Japanese characters are “bad”), but in this movie, as with real life, Chen Long Da Ge (“Big Brother” Jackie) clearly relishes his self proscribed role as Dragon Seed Numero Uno (Long De Chuan Ren, 龙的传人).