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 urprisingly
straightforward and a little underwhelming considering the prodigious advance
buzz that preceded it, "Initial D" is acceptable fare, which may
really be all it had the potential to be. A thoroughly commercial enterprise
from the word Go, "Initial D" stars untrained Taiwanese pop star Jay
Chou, who gets able assist from Hong Kong cinema king Anthony Wong and a cast
that will be familiar to Hong Kong cinephiles. The film has an impressive
pedigree, being directed by the duo of Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, and written by
Felix Chong, the trio having worked together previously on the mega hit (and
soon to be Hollywood remade) "Infernal
Affairs" trilogy.
Based on the Japanese manga by Shuichi Shigeno,
"Initial D" follows the (literally) downhill adventures of
tofu delivery teen Takumi (Chou), who spends his school days in a daze
about the flirty Natsuki (Anne Suzuki, "Returner"),
his afternoons working at the gas station of best bud Itsuki (Chapman
To), and his nights delivering tofu for his hard drinking (and
narcoleptic, one presumes) dad Bunta (Anthony Wong). After Takumi zips
past a drift racer (Shawn Yue, "Jiang
Hu") on a curvaceous hill one night, he becomes known as the
racer god of that particular hill. His secret identity blown, Takumi
becomes the target of challengers, including Edison Chen and, later,
Jordan Chan.
At over 100 minutes, "Initial D" is an
easy and brisk sit-through that is mostly entertaining, if ultimately
vacant. The film's races are entirely set along the hillside that Takumi
traverses on a regular basis, and as a result, once you see Takumi
defeat an opponent along the hills for the first time, you've basically
seen them all. Different opponents, same hero, and same track. There are
new obstacles with each new race, of course, but they're nothing a quick
and well-placed musical montage couldn't skip over in a few minutes. To
off set the repetitive nature of the races, the script delves into the
more cerebral, theoretical side of racing -- that is, if you were
interested in such things.
Of course my underwhelmed reaction to the film's
racing may be due to a general indifference on my part to racing movies
and racing in general, so I'll take it at face value that more
racing-inclined viewers will get more out of the film's downhill zooms
and vrooms. The film certainly has a lot of vehicular action to keep
viewers distracted, and directors Lau and Mak uses enough visual tricks
(a ton of freeze frames, wipes, and gimmicky edits) to keep even the
casual audience member like myself from becoming bored. While nicely
used in the confines of the movie, you've already seen the film's more
CGI-enhanced tricks (the POV shot that travels through a car's
windshield and out the back) done in most of your standard Hollywood
fare (most notably John Singleton's one-cut-a-second "2
Fast 2 Furious") years ago, so there's nothing innovative here.
In-between the film's many downhill races, the
script busies itself with the idyllic romance of Takumi and Natsuki. The
romance is standard stuff, with Nasuki acting a bit more flirtatious
than one is used to seeing in a Japanese film. Suzuki does fine, as does
Chou in his first starring turn, although it should be said that the
script really doesn't require all that much of either young actor.
Suzuki in particular has little to do, and the script's insistence on
giving her character a dark secret comes across as superfluous. Do we
really care? I didn't.
As the star, Chou doesn't carry the film, which isn't a
knock on the young man, because the film is crafted in such a way that
it smartly doesn't require him to. To give him credit, Chou plays the
unflappable racer convincingly, and the film's best moments involve
Takumi nonchalantly racing downhill, treating the races as another night
delivering tofu as fast as he can, or risk another beating from good ol
dad, who was himself a former racing king. The script provides a clever
background for Takumi's superior driving skills, most of it funny
exposition courtesy of Anthony Wong, who seems to be literally
sleepwalking through the film.
The fact
that "Initial D" was written, directed, and stars mostly
Chinese talent probably accounts for the film not really seeming all
that Japanese. In fact, I'm not entirely sure why the film stuck to its
Japanese roots, as listening to the Taiwanese Jay Chou being called
Takumi, or Odious Comic Relief Chapman To at work, only reminds the
audience that this is a very Chinese take on a Japanese tale. For better
or worst, there's not a whole of "Japanese-ness" left in this
cinematic "Initial D" to justify keeping it set in Japan, and
with Japanese characters, at all. To wit: if the spirit of the manga is
gone vis-à-vis the absence of a major Japanese actor in any prominent
roles, one has to wonder what the point was of keeping it Japanese in
the first place.
Ultimately, "Initial D" is serviceable PG
entertainment for the masses -- the younger, the better. No one dies,
there are no serious injuries in any of the races, and the film, like
its leading man, was primed and aimed squarely at the squirming little
girls and the young guys who likes racing movies. The lack of a true
villain in the film is not altogether a bad thing, as the presence of
one would only muddle up the film's squeaky-clean image. The visuals are
interesting and the soundtrack is filled with appropriate tracks, most
of them in English, surprisingly, with some Chinese songs toward the
end. For Hong Kong cinema, "Initial D" doesn't represent any
major improvement over, say, the last 200 films starring the Twins, but
for such a manufactured product, it's probably a lot better than it
should have been.
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