(18) 120min
(Cine Asia)

Hundreds of Chinese refugees wash up on the shores of Japan hoping for a better life, and none more so than Steelhead (Jackie Chan), who hasn’t only come for work but also to find a childhood sweetheart Xiu (Xu Jinglei).

A mélange of the sentimental and the predictable, colliding with the monstrous and the complex, The Shinjuku Incident is a pretty good bad movie. Steelhead’s love for Xiu is too often made up of doe eyed looks on Chan’s part, and predictable flashbacks on veteran filmmaker Yee Tung-Shing (it’s also hard to believe that Chan and Xiu are about the same age). But the film is fine on the various factions at play in the Japanese underworld, and how Chan must negotiate his way through them. Whether it is dealing with a cop who helps him out, Xiu’s husband whose life he saves, or the fellow Chinese immigrants who turn against him, Chan gets caught in an ever-deeper mess. Extras include making of/behind the scenes featurettes; extended and deleted scenes; interview gallery (Jackie Chan, Daniel Wu, Xu Jinglei, Masaya Kato, Naoto Takenata, Chin Kar Lok, Pater Kam Pau-Tat). Also available in Blu-ray.