SnoopyStyle Tietou/Steelhead/Nick (Jackie Chan) leaves his rural Chinese village to search for his love Xiu Xiu who had disappeared in Japan. He travels illegally on a freighter but he cannot return home after an incident. With his friend Jie/Joe, they try to survive on the fringe. He saves Detective Kitano's life in a raid. He discovers that Xiu Xiu/Yuko Eguchi had married Yakuza leader Eguchi who is more open-minded than other Yakuza. He starts to build a Chinese pretty crime family but Jie would rather have a roasted chestnut cart. Taiwanese triad leader Gao discovers tampering in his pachinko machine and savagely cuts up Jie. He sneaks in to avenge Jie but overhears a plot to kill Eguchi. He saves Eguchi's life and he is given territories to control. He tries to govern within the law and puts Jie in charge of new people. The years pass by and the gang becomes corrupt. He tries to give himself up to Kitano. Jie becomes more brutal and Yakuza boss authorizes the overthrow of Eguchi.Jackie Chan's character is way too moral. His desperate goodness feels clunky. It's nowhere near the silliness of 'Rumble in the Bronx' but the attempted grittiness is betrayed at almost every point in the story. The violence gets a little bloody but feels limited. The big action scene is the bad guys throwing rocks. I do want Jackie Chan to branch out into more gritty and less kung fu fighting action. This is not quite there although I like the attempt.

Joe Bit of a surprise this film. Recorded it as was a Jackie Change film. Seen numerous of his films over the years when I was a kid, but tended to avoid his latest stuff which was just dirge. This though looked and sounded different.Note, there's no martial arts, there's no comedy and there's no 'Jackie'. He practically doesn't even smile. Instead we have Jackie Chan playing it straight as an illegal immigrant to Japan from China, aiming to make a living. Up against it, he and his cohorts get tangled up in the local mafia problems, and find that crime is their only way to survive. Some though have their limits, others don't know when to stop.This was an interesting enough movie, and Jackie Chan shows he has good acting ability away from his comedy family friendly fare. Ably assisted by a good ensemble and some good cinematography, the whole piece is well put together.Yet it still lacks something. It doesn't help that despite the change, Jackie Chan is still at the end playing the little guy with a heart and soul. There could have been a bit better developed story too. It wasn't bad but nothing special, yet was still good. Reverting to type for Jackie Chan's character in the last quarter was not a good move I think.It's a fair film, and if you like your Asian gangster movies then this is not a bad choice. For Jackie Chan it was nice to see a change, but it's also a lost opportunity too.

Wizard-8 There are signs here and there that "The Shinjuku Incident" got some inspiration from the American remake of "Scarface", with its illegal immigrant hero rising in organized crime as well as an under siege climax. However, the majority of the movie does its own thing in its own style, and ends up being a very entertaining movie. Jackie Chan doesn't do comedy or martial arts here, instead acting very seriously. And he actually does a decent job, making his character somewhat sympathetic despite breaking a lot of laws along the way. The movie also gives great insight into parts of Japanese and Chinese society you probably haven't seen in a movie before. Overall, this is a good movie provided you know what kind of movie you're going to get - this is a serious drama and not an action romp. I did have a couple of minor quibbles, however. First, quite often the cinematography is not very attractive - big sections of the movie have an unattractive yellow tinge to them. Second, the movie runs a bit too long. I'm not saying the movie ever gets boring, but I think the movie would have run better had things been tightened just a little.

Dan Ashley (DanLives1980) In the same vein as JCVD, this very surprising offering from Jackie Chan sees the aging kung-fu legend as a savvy mafia man leading Chinese Triads in a turf war against the Yakuza in Tokyo's Shinjuku district, based on a real life incident.'Steelhead' played by Chan, is a Chinese peasant fixing farm machinery for a pittance. When the girl he is set to marry travels to Japan and doesn't come back, he follows hundreds of other illegal immigrants across the border and learning to survive on the streets, under the radar and working illegally.With the government's stringent efforts to stop all illegal immigrants working in Japan, Steelhead and his street brothers learn how to hustle and work the black market but when Japanese crime syndicates become the bane of their existence, Steelhead leads his own people to fight them and unwittingly saves the life of highly respected Yakuza boss Eguchi, who it turns out has married his fiancée.In return, Eguchi grants Steelhead power and space to operate, providing Steelhead becomes his personal hit-man but when Steelhead's Triad syndicate starts to grow more powerful, events escalate until only war is inevitable. The only man who might stop it is Inspector Kitano, a detective whose life Steelhead selflessly saved while on the run.The Shinjuku Incident is clever in the way that it manages to be bloody and violent yet moral and sometimes sympathetic and having no kung fu fights whatsoever. Chan is brilliant as the peasant turned reluctant mafia boss, a man who turned to harmless crime to survive who was drawn to greater evils to protect those he cared about.If anything it's the moral opposite of Scarface, only it reaches much the same conclusion, that people see power corrupting ordinary men, when it's just corruption that corrupts power, which affects even the best of us.Chan doesn't go to such brave limits of acting as Van Damme did in 2008's JCVD but he acts his pants off anyway and shows what he's worth outside of the dangerous stunts he's known for. And bangs a hooker, and gets drunk, and stabs people to death, and shoots gangsters in broad daylight.It's not Infernal Affairs but it's one hell of an achievement of the world's long time favourite kung-fu action star!