Shinjuku Incident Review

Before going into the cinema I was expecting some sort of a Rumble in the Bronx type of story but substitute the Bronx with Tokyo and swap the black and latino gangsters with the yakuza and you have Shinjuku Incident since after all, this is a Jackie Chan movie. I was wrong which was good... sort of.

This movie have zero stunts. No kungfu and zero action. In this movie, Jackie acts as an illegal (kungfu-less) Chinese immigrant who "sneaked" into Japan to find out his girlfriend's whereabouts and is caught up in a Yakuza civil war. Usually a typical Japanese will put Jackie in a wrong place at a wrong time and you will have him running around the whole of Tokyo and the movie ends with Jackie catching the top crook. But this ain't your typical Jackie Chan movie.

Instead of heading straight into the "wrong place wrong time" scenario immediately, we were shown how hard the lives of the illegal Chinese immigrants are. How they band together into a slum like environment and how this small community strives hard to survive in such a foreign environment and how they were drawn into a middle of an ongoing Yakuza civil war which actually turns out to be between a mix of Young and Dangerous and The Godfather.

What I like about this movie, is how for once Jackie is playing out of his usual goody-two-shoes accidental hero or superhuman cop character and jumped into a more down-to-earth kungfu-less chap and also how they try to make a Jackie Chan vehicle movie into an Asian gangster flick. The story is quite decent but when it reaches to the second half of the movie, plot holes began to show up at a rapid-fire rate. The cinematography is excellent and some scenes which is so nicely taken that it almost let you forget about the plotholes in the story. And last but not least the acting is very solid. I mean after all the whole cast is made up of veteran actors which could act without effort at any given time.

Time to play Spot the Familiar Faces from this picture

Other than the (second half of the) story, the pacing of the movie is something that I have big issues with. The story started of at a slow pace which was good as they used the characters to slowly buildup the story (kinda like GTA 4 only without the annoying cousin). Just when the buildup began to build momentum, the director slows things down again which kind of kill off all the buildup that the director had so painstakingly build. Then there are some parts of the movie which happened just like that with zero buildup which kinda totally kills my interests when the movie reaches the two thirds mark.

So what's my final verdict of this movie? A decent 6.8 out of 10. This movie could easily be Jackie Chan's chance to cement his reputation as a "serious" actor but unfortunately a classic this movie is not. Too many plot holes and bad pacing had spoiled what could be a movie of both technical and scriptwriting brilliance.


P/S: If only one of the assasination scnes could be as cool as the Godfather's "Baptism of Fire" scene I would had easily give this flick a 7.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Watchmen Review)

A long long time ago I came upon an article regarding the graphic novel a.k.a comics for adults called Watchmen. In that article, it sang praises after praises about this short series and how it was the only comic book to ever made it into the Times 100 list of best novels.

Curious as I were, I embark on an internet journey to obtain a copy of this series just to see how amazing this mini-series (12 books in total) of a comic book was. Upon reading the first book, I was hooked and within a day, I had finished the whole series and was totally swept away by the complexity and the awesomeness of the story. Coincidentally, a few days later, which happens to be right after the success of 300 by director Zack Snyder, the movie to Watchmen was announced. I was thrilled and worried at the same time. One part of me was thrilled that just shortly after completing my best comic book story of all time, a movie of it was announced! While the other part of me was very worried how a story so complex as Watchmen could ever translate into 2 to 3 hours of screen time? After 2 years of anticipating to finally watch the movie, fortunately my worries are unfounded.... almost.

I was glad that this movie do not deviate much from the comics. Which remains faithful for the most of 90% of the story. Heck, even the cinematography tends mimic nearly frame by frame of the comic book maybe save for the fight scenes which were way more awesome then the ones in the comics. If there's any Oscar for "Most Faithful Adaptation" category, Watchmen will certainly win the lifetime achievement of this category.

Unfortunately, despite the story being almost faithful to its source material, this movie is hampered by its inability to capture the feeling of most of the key moments of the comic book (see the SPOILERS section for a full list) and also care to explain in detail some important scenes.

So what's my final verdict of this movie? A solid 8.5 out of 10. Another solid comic book adaptation with some minor flaws here and there but still an overall highly watchable film.

P.S: The ending of this movie is quite "profound". Some people might not get it and it will ended up hating the movie. Another note is, if by the halfway mark of the movie and you still go asking "what is this guy's superpower?" to your friends, do yourself a favour and leave the cinema.





RANTS (SPOILERS ALERTS)
The attempted rape of the Silk Spectre I by the Comedian was one of the most iconic moments of the graphic novel unfortunately the film fails to capture this moment.

No details were fleshed out regarding the Keene Act which outlaws "costumed heroes" from fighting crimes.

How Ozymandias' pet which is a successful crossbreed of several felines were not mentioned but instead left the movie-goers confused on what the hell is that think.

Night Owl 2's impotence (sexually) and how he got his mood back is not described in detail.

Ozymandias is way to skinny and frail compared to his comic counterpart.

The plot which Ozymandias hatched to create a peaceful world was actually through a genetic engineered alien-looking gigantic squid to make people believes that it was an alien invasion but in the movie it was something that mimics Dr. Manhattan's power.

Unmasking of Rorschach which was one of the graphic novel's greatest moment happened just like that in the movie. No build-up whatsoever.

How Dr. Manhattan changed his mind to finally interfere into helping mankind was not well done.