Watching Dragon, Hidden Growler

INDEX

Many Chinese and East Asian films are very successful due to their fantastic creativity and innovation.

Here are a selection that deserve your attention.

This article was also featured in Chinatown - The Magazine.

Rawle Austin presents...

Intial D:Driftracer

Intial D: Driftracer is a simple but effective story laden with a booming soundtrack that electrifies the whole piece. It’s highly entertaining. Welcome to today’s Hong Kong cinema. The story revolves around the art of drifting, indeed, the D in the title stands for drifting. What is drifting I hear you ask? It’s the technique of putting a car into a controlled slide around bends without losing any speed.

Driftracing, where cars race around hairpin bends is a highly popular sport in Asia. OK, lesson over.

This is a great premise for a film and was actually adapted by Felix Chong from a massively popular Japanese Manga comic by Shuichi Shigeno.

Who is the mysterious “Akina Racing God?” Who is the person who has perfected the art of drifting around the deadly and notorious hairpin bends of Mount Akina in Japan?

Those are the questions that start off this action packed feast of adrenalin. The Night Kids, an illegal street racing team, are keen to test their skills against this person.

This is unashamedly a feel good movie and a good one at that. The strong cast has a great deal to do with the success of this film. The combined pedigree held within is full to bursting point. Its directors, Alan Mak and Andrew Lau, gained previous success from their Infernal Affairs trilogy and have carried over their unique style to this piece.

Onto the actors now and Jay Chou plays Takumi Fujiwara, an innocent, naïve and shy individual who is kept on a tight leash by his dad. He’s a senior high school student in Gunma Province in Japan.

When you first encounter his character he’s immediately likable and you find yourself rooting for him from the start.

He delivers Tofu, made by his dad, to various customers by car. Not just any car. His dad’s wreck of a car.

And that’s where the fun begins. Jay Chou is a massively successful Taiwanese singer songwriter and has already been dubbed Asia’s golden child.

Intial D is his first screen role and his star is set to soar to greater heights.

Film heavyweight, actor Anthony Wong stars as Bunta Fujiwara who is Takumi’s father. He owns the Fujiwara Tofu Shop and in his day was the premier downhill racer in Mount Akina. He knows how to customise a car for maximum power. But you’d never believe that as Bunta is now a washed up, constantly drunk, part time womaniser. Look out for a hilarious scene where he is being carried upstairs. Pure comedy! Spending most of his time feeling sorry for himself and taking out his frustrations on his son he cuts a sad figure but occasionally shows flashes of brilliance. Anthony Wong’s screen career showed early promise in his 1993 film ‘The Untold Story’ which won him a best actor gong at the 14th Hong Kong Film Awards.

However, his most acclaimed role to date was playing Inspector Wong in the Infernal Affairs Trilogy (if you haven’t seen those set of movies, please do so).

Actress Anne Suzuki plays Natsuki Mogi who is a classmate of Takumi. Though her stunning looks grab everyone’s attention at their school she has quite the crush on him.

I like the way her character has an immediate impact on Takumi which serves to drive the story as easily as the Driftracers drive their cars.

Anne Suzuki’s acting career got off to an early start when, at the age of 12, she starred in Snow falling on Cedars in 1999 with Ethan Hawke.

Her breakthrough came in the 2002 action blockbuster The Returner which won her Best New Actor at the 26th Japan Academy Awards. With Intial D: Driftracer, Anne Suzuki has arrived and you’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the future, mark my words. Rounding off the cast I have to mention Chapman To, who stars as Itsuki Tachibana. He provides the comic relief throughout the movie and is great to watch.

He’s a spoilt brat with delusions of grandeur and longs to be a street racer. He’s also the best friend of Takumi, which stems from their fathers also being old friends.

Chapman To’s career started off in TV but hard work and numerous films later gradually earned him a role in the first two parts of the Infernal Affairs Trilogy.

He’s never looked back since and the future is bright for him.

The street bass and auto styling experts ‘Fuel’ composed the soundtrack, which is punchy, loud and perfect for the mood of the whole film.

This movie will inevitably draw comparisons to ‘The Fast and the Furious’ but for all the right reasons.

Intial D: Driftracer is a great movie and I highly recommend it. In the words of the film’s tagline “It’s not what you drive, it’s what drives you.”

It will be released in UK cinemas on 12th May 2006 by Contender Entertainment Group.

Running time: 109 minutes, Certificate: 12A

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Check out Dianying.com for an extensive database of Chinese films.

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