Seen The New Jackie Chan Film? No, You Probably Haven't Seen Shinjuku Incident
The Spy Next Door proved you can visually trace Jackie Chan's action career and end it on a horrible note. So why isn't anyone mentioning Shinjuku Incident
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In one of the quietest releases we've seen since The Marc Pease Experience, Incident is out in New York and Los Angeles this weekend. But it isn't listed on IMDB's Now Playing and received capsule reviews from The Los Angeles Times, Village Voice, Hollywood Reporter and Variety. Well, to be fair, the Variety review is about seven grafs of plot summary and the worst kicker graf in the history of film criticism:
Version caught at the Hong Kong fest was given a Category III rating by local censors, usually reserved for sex and extreme violence. Local-release version will be slightly edited for a milder Category IIb rating.
Even better? The five locations in California may as well be in the desert. So why are we ignoring the Incident when it offers something strange: Jackie Chan doing something that isn't doing joke stunts with kids. It opened the 2009 Hong Kong Film Festival and is probably one of the more mature pieces that Chan has done since he showed up in The Founding of the Republic along with every other major Chinese actor. In fact, this film goes against every marketing campaign designed to show Chan as a family-friendly, pointless action star who is getting progressively older. Here, you get Chan as a Chinese immigrant in Tokyo named 'Steelhead' who inveitably becomes embroiled in organized crime. The Chinese are treated as pariahs within Japanese society and there aren't any wacky jokes to be had. Of course, you'll never see this and the last coherent memory of Jackie Chan you'll have until he's dragged out to do press for The Karate Kid remake? It's going to be him in a fucking children's film that begins with a reminder of what he used to do. Why not do yourself a favor and see what Chan can do when he's not being forced to pander by some marketing department.
