Shinjuku Incident

[GeneChing]

Read Jackie Chan in His Mid-50s: THE SPY NEXT DOOR and SHINJUKU INCIDENT by August West.

[GeneChing]

I've just been contacted by the U.S. distributors. Here's the official U.S. site.

They provided me with the following list of confirmed theaters so far for the 2/5/2010 release.

Atlanta
AMC Colonial 18
825 Lawrenceville-Suwanee Rd.
Lawrenceville, GA 30043
(770)237-0744

Houston
AMC First Colony 24
3301 Town Centre Blvd.
South Sugar Land, TX 77479
(281)277-5858

Los Angeles
AMC Puente 20
1560 South Azusa Ave.
Rowland Heights, CA 91748
(626)810-7949

Los Angeles
AMC Santa Anita 16
400 Baldwin Ave
Arcadia, CA 91007
(626)321-4265

Los Angeles - Orange County
AMC The Block 30
20 City Blvd West
Orange, CA 92868
(714)769-4288

New York City
AMC Loews Village 7
66 3rd Ave.
New York, NY 10003
(212)982-2116

New Jersey
AMC Loews Ridgefield Park 12
75 Challenger Road
Ridgefield Park, NJ 07660
(201)440-9178

San Francisco
AMC Cupertino 16
10123 N. Wolfe Road
Cupertino, CA 95014
(408)252-5960

San Francisco
AMC Van Ness 14
1000 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415)674-4630

Seattle
AMC Alderwood 16
18733 33rd Ave. W
Lynnwood, WA 98037
(425)921-2980

[GeneChing]

Ten winners will receive a LIMITED EDITION SHINJUKU INCIDENT POSTER. These are the original Hong-Kong-edition theatrical posters which are out of print. This is only a one-week contest. Entries must be received by 6:00 p.m. PST on 02/10/2010.

Good luck everyone!

[Lucas]

if i win will you sign mine?

[enoajnin]

The distributors at the screening said they had added more theaters in the Los Angeles/ Orange county are so you might want to check your local listings

[Hebrew Hammer]

You can also watch it via the web...I just did today...and enjoyed it immensely.

[Lucas]

where do you find things like that to watch them on line?

[Hebrew Hammer]

I'm old so it took me a while to figure this movies online thing but the site I PM'd you works out well.

[GeneChing]

SHINJUKU INCIDENT by Greg Lynch Jr. was just posted today. It's double coverage with
Jackie Chan in His Mid-50s: THE SPY NEXT DOOR and SHINJUKU INCIDENT by August West, but that piece was more about Jackie and Spy. This new piece focuses strictly on Shinjuku.

[GeneChing]

See our announcement in our TC Media forum.

[GeneChing]

Did anyone see this in the theaters?

The subdued incident
Jackie Chan’s in another fight for his life with Shinjuku Incident, only this time, there’s less fighting
Dean Carrico
Mar 10, 2010
Jackie Chan, the clown prince of kicking ass, is now 55. Critics have observed that many of his heavily choreographed fight scenes have begun to lose their intensity, which leaves us with the family-friendly Hollywood fare–mostly dreck like the recent The Spy Next Door. By his own contract, Chan’s almost always portrayed as the nice guy. He never curses (save for a scant two films). He even refuses to do sex scenes. The result is that you know what you’re getting into when you buy a ticket that has Jackie Chan on the bill, as it has been the same for more than 100 films now.

Until Shinjuku Incident came along.

Helmed under Chan’s own production company, Shinjuku Incident plays like a Tokyo version of Brian De Palma’s Scarface, without the cursing. Chan plays Steelhead, who arrives in Japan from China during the mass flooding of illegal immigrants in the ’90s. He works some straight jobs amid corruption and racism, lucks into a life of crime and finds he’s quite adept at it. Moving up from stolen phone cards, Steelhead gets involved in gambling scams. Of course, knowing Chan’s reluctance to play bad guys, there’s a glimmer of humanity. He’s doing it for his people, who are oppressed and taken advantage of. He’s using the money to try and open legitimate businesses. It turns out he’s not even an illegal immigrant, but lost his papers in a raid. Now if only there was a way to justify those two killings.

Yes, Supercop whacks somebody. But stranger than seeing the eternal nice guy playing a baddie is watching Chan brood behind the scenes, more Tony Soprano than Tony Montana. Even when things escalate to violence, it’s a different style than what we’re used to. No running up walls or using every household item available to win a fight, instead we see disorganized brawls that spiral out of control, much like Steelhead’s life.

The storyline plays on the moralized rise-and-fall stories told a hundred times before with all the accoutrements, like the cop who feels indebted to the petulant brother who starts to make a mess of the empire Steelhead builds (it’s almost surprising that he doesn’t get a kiss of death sendoff from Chan–that’s how reliant Shinjuku Incident is on other films of this genre). Still, with its rote script comes a subdued, well-done performance from its star and producer. Chan’s not going to win any awards with this film, but like Jean-Claude Van Damme’s performance in 2008’s JCVD, it’s refreshing to see a near-reinvention of an action hero.

[GeneChing]

Jackie Chan in Shinjuku Incident
Monday, 15 March 2010 12:59

Jackie Chan is having a busy schedule with many pictures both in 2009 and 2010. ‘Shinjuku Incident’ is another crime + drama film featuring Jackie Chan.

In the early 1990s, a Chinese tractor mechanic nicknamed Nick (Jackie Chan) enters Japan illegally in search of his fiancée Xiu Xiu. Nick has made the journey on a freighter that sinks before reaching the harbour. Nick manages to reach dry land, avoiding the Japanese police as he tracks down his brother Joe and asks for help. Joe provides food and shelter while Nick looks for a job and searches for his lost love in this strange new city. Joe introduces Nick to some fellow Chinese immigrants and each of them help the newcomer by showing him how the black market and other underworld activities can help him survive. The menial jobs available to them are difficult and pay very little. Nick considers the possibility, but he is not a criminal… yet.

The film was planned for almost 10 years according to director Derek Yee due to Jackie Chan’s busy schedule in their filming of Rush Hour 3. It was heard that this movie was banned in communist China because of the portrayal of Chinese immigrants with sex and violence.

As most movie critics have explained, Jackie Chan is a whole new actor in this film. It is not boring though the humour and superb stunts are not present in the movie. Some say they like Protégé more than this film. Rotten Tomato has rated this film with 59% of positive reviews from critics. Though it is somewhat a conventional movie, the plot of the film will linger after it ends. So it is also a nice movie for fans of jackie and those searching for action.

Before you immediately sigh and click past this trailer just because Jackie Chan is in it, stop and give it a chance in Shinjuku Incident. This is rated as a one of must watch movies of 2010.

Released date: February 5, 2010

"must watch movies of 2010" is bold. I wouldn't have gone that far.

[GeneChing]

Not sure what is going on with the title of this article.

Shinjuku Incident needs
By AMY BIANCOLLI FILM WRITER
April 22, 2010, 5:08PM
Barking Cow Distribution

Jackie Chan is trying to expand his acting repetoire, but Shinjuku Incident is the wrong vehicle to try this.

Set in 1990s Tokyo, the film centers on how the lives of Chinese immigrants in Japan are affected by the Japanese yakuza, or organized crime

Jackie Chan can do no wrong, with two exceptions. First, when he appears in a movie about a blinged-out tuxedo. And second, when he stars as a murderous gangster with the naïve beneficence of a child.

It just can't be done. Not even by him, and that's saying something, because few actors more perfectly embody butt-kicking inviolability alongside crinkly-eyed niceness. But Shinjuku Incident demands too much of this normally flexible movie star, who puts on the leathery toughness of a Chinese immigrant in Japan like the jacket he dons near the start. Try as he might, strut as he does toward climactic showdowns with ruthless adversaries, his character remains an incongruous muddle. Same goes for the movie.

Directed and written (with Tin Nam Chun) by Hong Kong filmmaker Derek Yee, Shinjuku Incident (or San suk si gin) is set in Tokyo sometime in the 1990s, a period when illegal immigrants arrived in boatloads from China. Chan's character, Steelhead, is a mild-mannered tractor mechanic whose fiancé, Xiu Xiu (Xu Jinglei), disappears in Japan. Eventually he follows her, arriving in a heap on a beach — and promptly killing a border guard.

But Steelhead is a good man. Heroic. Within 20 minutes he's rescued three people, one of them a cop (Naoto Takenaka), whose debt then drives the simplest of several confusing subplots. With the help of his good friend Jie (Daniel Wu), Steelhead enters the catch-as-catch-can world of Chinese illegals in the Shinjuku ward, most of whom take odd jobs sorting garbage while trying to milk a little extra in shady enterprises on the side.

Steelhead, being heroic, at first resists the dark side. But Steelhead, being heroic, can't help himself; he's just too darned nice not to provoke a crime wave for the betterment of his people, even when it risks the sword-wielding fury of the Japanese mafia. Yee's movie heaps on the clichés from the mob-and-molls oeuvre — we find all the stifled love and nauseating violence — but it's undone by dim lighting, poor exposition and bewildering edits. The fight scenes should appeal to fans of hard-hitting action, but they're hard to follow and lack wit.

Released last year in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, Shinjuku's American release might have benefited from a few more explanatory title cards — telling us that Xiu Xiu had been missing for years, not weeks, or marking off the passage of time after Steelhead's arrival. (A key prop at the climax is a flash drive, a doodad that didn't hit the market until 2000 or so.) Also, I could have used a small hunk of text as an intro, something to explain the squabbling among branches of Tokyo's organized crime syndicates.

After years of kids' films and comic chop-socky, Chan is obviously trying to stretch himself. The plain shock of seeing him in a sex scene, however fleeting, is proof enough that audiences aren't much accustomed to seeing him in mature situations. But he needs a better movie, and he needs a better role.

[GeneChing]

It's been all about Jackie and Karate Kid lately. Our last two online sweepstakes were for THE SPY NEXT DOOR & KARATE KID ON BLU-RAY.

Enter to win SHINJUKU INCIDENT. Contest ends 6:00 p.m. PST on 06/24/2010. Good luck everyone!

[Jimbo]

Not sure what is going on with the title of this article.

I disagree with her opinion that the fights are hard to follow. And they aren't supposed to be 'witty'. Much of the violence is supposed to be 'nauseating', it's a gangster movie. And while the violence is pretty extreme for a JC movie, if you compare it to something like Hostel, it's nowhere near as uncomfortable to watch, at least for me. I think the message of the movie is to take away the glamour many associate with gangsters. Obvously, making the fight scenes stylized, overly clear and witty would not have achieved that.