A 2009 China release that stars Jackie Chan, Naoto Takenaka, Daniel Wu, Xu Jinglei, and Fan Bingbing.
Even as over-rated as he became at one point in his illustrious career, I can still never pass up a chance to watch Jackie Chan star in a movie.
Especially a movie that ignores his old, stuck-in-a-rut ways and forces him to portray a character unlike any he's done in the past.
Shinjuku Incident is about an everyday Chinese man whose fiance decides to leave the country in search of a better life.
He can't get her out of his mind, and when she stops replying to his letters, he hops a freighter and illegally enters Japan in an effort to find her.
The creepy factor aside (he looks so old now, it's not funny - and they cast him beside Xu Jing Lei, a girl more than half his age), this movie did well to suck me in and keep me wide-eyed for the duration.
No Jackie Chan humor, no death-defying Gung fu, and if I'm not mistaken, he got his ass kicked a few times!
Apparently, Shinjuku is a place where illegal, Asian immigrants hang out, and though the problem is real and the hatred against immigrants of any race is a cultural phenomenon in Japan, the story concentrated more on Steelhead and his own, personal issues with trying to survive in a foreign land after he finds out that his beloved is married to an up-n-coming Yakuza boss.
He struggles at the start, but his fellow illegals rely on him to make things better and to help out.
Eventually, he makes good - but his goofy friends can't handle their success and start to fall back on their old, bad ways (yea, right).
Daniel Wu traveled to Japan with Jackie, and he's a goofy, young kid with no talent or drive.
Jackie buys him an almond cart and Daniel is really happy about it until the day a Yakuza thug does something really mean and ruins the kids life forever.
The ending is an anticipated bloodbath, but I still think this movie was decent and worth the watch.
