Shinjuku Incident

Long regarded as Jackie Chan’s first real venture into serious acting in Derek Yee’s Shinjuku Incident, Chan does not display his usual variety of kung-fu cabaret but serious expression to highlight some of the underlying problems ongoing in Chinese culture. Also, we see Jackie Chan get jiggy-jiggy for the first time on screen and hopefully the last. You cannot help but feel sorry for Chan. When you put the two pairs of buttocks of the lead characters together, your heart automatically sinks in that the fact that Daniel Wu’s bum only makes Chan’s look as though it’s been fermented to an armchair for the best side of 10 years. Toner, leaner and meaner springs to mind.
The film is set in the early part of the 90’s and Steelhead (Chan) is an illegal Chinese immigrant who has just smuggled his way into Tokyo. He has come to try and find a living and also for his childhood love, Xiu Xiu (Xu Jinglei). He meets fellow a group of Chinese also-rans including Jie (Daniel Wu) and several other famous faces from the world of Hong Kong Cinema like
The film is set in the early part of the 90’s and Steelhead (Chan) is an illegal Chinese immigrant who has just smuggled his way into Tokyo. He has come to try and find a living and also for his childhood love, Xiu Xiu (Xu Jinglei). He meets fellow a group of Chinese also-rans including Jie (Daniel Wu) and several other famous faces from the world of Hong Kong Cinema like Chin Kar Lok who help him get some work down in the sewers of Tokyo. Whilst delving through the delights of Tokyo’s main under passage, his group are chased off by the police and incidentally Steelhead saves the life of Inspector Kitano (Takenaka Naoto).  Luckily he escapes but leaves a lasting impression on the Inspector, who feels indebted to pay him back. Just as you think the story ends there, Steelhead’s venture through Tokyo’s strenuous neighbourhoods continue when he meets the loveless Lily (Fan Bing Bing). Usually, when boy meets girl, trouble ensues. Correct. It does. A few Yakuza mobs here and the love of your life there, juggling with the harsh and sheer difficulty of immigrant life and gangland warfare just goes to show the grass isn’t always greener.
And so the light bulb above Chan’s head lights up and he gets involved. You may think its kiss-kiss cry-cry the end. You are very wrong.
Director Derek Yee has built an extraordinary reputation for himself since moving from front to behind the camera after a successful acting career. His input on the rigid yet rugid balance of action and drama allow the audience to feel sentimentality with moments of extreme gore. Obviously, this led to censors in mainland China not allowing the film to be released in China.
The problem that it tackles is obvious through the film. One might think that pursuing a film based on tentative relations between two countries with such a history is brave. No feat too big for Yee. It delivers a clear message that through the conflict, relations between Taiwanese, Japanese and Chinese people can cohabitate. For a Westerner looking through the looking glass, you would just assume it as being the typical gang v gang. Yet the pragmatics are there, it is the semantics that are more powerful to understand.