Shinjuku Incident

After countless action-comedy roles, Jackie Chan is finally giving serious acting a try in Shinjuku Incident. Yes you heard that right – there is no ‘slam-bam-haha’ action in the movie, where Jackie Chan single handedly fights off scores of baddies. Instead, it’s a story of Chinese immigrants who enter Japan illegally in search of that elusive prosperity – but are condemned to live in ghettoes and do menial labour. For some, the only way out of the wretched conditions seems to be life of crime …

The movie is a Hong Kong production and apparently took some 9 years to wrap up. Thankfully we get the English dubbed version, so we don’t have to squint at the subtitles continuously. And the dubbing is fairly decent, but some flavour invariably gets lost in dubbings …

Jackie Chan tries his best to appear serious throughout the movie and he succeeds mostly – even his smile appears subdued. The action sequences are subdued as well – with no fancy kung-fu stuff. However his age shows through and his opening scenes with Xiu are not at all convincing – they look more father and daughter than childhood sweethearts. The other woman in the movie – Lily – seems better paired with him, though both the women do not have much to do on screen.

Jackie Chan plays Nick, a simple farmer in some unnamed province in China, who’s childhood sweetheart Xiu goes to Japan to ‘earn money’ but then never comes back. Unable to reach her, Nick follows her to Tokyo and settles down with a group of other illegal Chinese, doing low level manual labour – like cleaning garbage grounds and underground sewers.

However, a chance encounter with Xiu - now a wife of a powerful Yakuza boss – while working in a restaurant makes Nick rethink his life. He decides to begin his life in crime – starting with simple fake phone cards, graduating to stealing from supermarkets with credit card fraud and cheating at casino slot machines. And he helps along his friends with him as well, slowly turning to organized crime.

From then on, the movie is very reminiscent of Goodfellas (and various other similar mafia movies). There are quite a few subplots like the relationship between Nick and his best friend, between Xiu and her Yakuza husband and the Japanese inspector – but they are satisfactorily closed out with the climax. The setting of the movie is quite dark and gritty, and the violence quite sudden and unexpected – but gory. The pace of the movie is a little slow at times and you can make out that some scenes have been cut away for the Indian release (but nothing major lost like The Reader).

Shinjuku Incident is a decent film, but nothing outstanding. Jackie Chan does a serious role but doesn’t quite blow the screen away. Catch it if you feel like watching a good gangster movie or haven’t watched an Asian movie in sometime …