Shinjuku Incident

Starring: Jackie Chan, Daniel Wu Yin-cho, Fan Bingbing, Xu Jinglei, Masaya Kato

Director: Derek Yee Tung-shing

Category: IIB (Putonghua and Japanese)

If the violent incidents in Shinjuku's shadows fall short of inspiring audiences, it's more a case of miscasting than poor scripting.

The first teaming of Jackie Chan (above, standing) and director-writer Derek Yee Tung-shing, an auteur with an uncanny ability to take mainstream commercial fare and elevate it a few notches, is seemingly a match made in celluloid heaven. Shinjuku Incident provides Chan with a change-of-pace role and Yee an entree to overseas markets, where he is largely an unknown commodity. But despite an earnest performance that ranks among Chan's best, the actor is 20 years older than the part demands, resulting in a sense of disbelief emanating from the movie's very core.

A further barrier is Yee's efforts in reconciling Chan's good-guy image with the nuanced morality of the character he portrays. Steelhead (Chan) is an illegal Chinese immigrant who works his way up through the Tokyo underworld, a blood-splattered, drug-soaked universe in which power corrupts even the most pure-hearted. That is, with the exception of Steelhead, whose ignorance, willful or not, about the worst activities perpetuated under his leadership somehow mitigates the man's culpability. Yee nobly grapples with the conundrum, and while he injects a sense of realism that's unusual in a Chan film, the ethical conclusions are more cop-out than considered.