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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hong Kong remake of popular anime series about road racing, September 28, 2005
INITIAL D is a Hong Kong movie based on the popular Japanese anime/manga title about downhill mountain road racing in Japan's Gunma Prefecture. It was a boxoffice hit earlier this year (2005) in HK and was directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, the directing team that also gave us the acclaimed INFERNAL AFFAIRS police-vs.-triad trilogy from 2002-03. The cast is topped by young stars Jay Chou, Edison Chen and Shawn Yue and veteran stars Anthony Wong, Kenny Bee, and Jordan Chan. The lead female role is taken by Japanese actress Anne Suzuki (RETURNER). The film is set in Japan but mostly shot in HK and everyone behaves like they're in a Hong Kong movie, especially Chapman To's Itsuki, who is not the excitable, buffoonish sidekick basking in Tak's glow from the anime but a huskier overbearing race star wannabe who seeks glory and success on the backs of others' efforts.
The events in the movie basically all originate in the anime/manga, but are greatly condensed here. Elements are taken from the entire first season of the TV show and the beginning of the second. The film is probably best seen by those unfamiliar with the anime or manga. As someone who's read a lot of the manga and seen much of the anime (and reviewed several volumes for this site), I found that I couldn't separate my view of the characters and story from my attachment to the anime. I couldn't help but continually compare the movie unfavorably with the anime, which I find so much more involving in every way.
There's nothing wrong per se with the actors or the plotting or the racing scenes in the movie. Everyone does a fine job, for the most part. It's just that the anime and manga, because of the longform continuing storylines, were able to develop the characters and build the emotional elements to make them much more effective and engaging in the long run. In the anime, the technology used to devise the racing scenes kept getting better as the series progressed and the editing techniques grew more sophisticated, until the racing scenes late in the series became some of the most exciting knockout action scenes ever created for anime. The downhill races in the HK movie are good, but are just not as intricate as those in the anime.
I do, however, have two major objections to the movie. Bunta, Tak's father (played by Anthony Wong), is made a hopeless drunk, which seriously compromises the father-son relationship which is so subtly and gently handled in the anime/manga. Also, the music in the movie consists mostly of English-language rap songs that sound too similar to the dreadful new rap pieces splattered on the English dub soundtracks of the anime DVDs. We don't get any of the great Eurobeat songs composed for the original Japanese anime soundtracks.
Otherwise, it's a well-made movie and should provide ample entertainment to those with no particular attachment to the original.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A mixed bag., January 2, 2006
Initial D is a live action movie based on the anime/comic books series of the same name. It tells the story of Takumi, a tofu delivery boy who goes on to become a street racing legend, having unwittingly perfected the art of driving during his many delivery runs.
Make no mistake about it; any live action Initial D flick has a lot to live up to and compressing an entire anime series into a movie was never going to be an easy task, so it's unsurprising that some of the main characters from the series have been left out. The most notable absences were those of Keisuke Takahashi and Iketani, both of whom were pivotal to the plot. In this movie, the role of both of these characters seems to have been taken over by a now moustache-sporting Nakazato Takeshi, who not only introduces Takumi to road racing but provides him with his first real race, too.
Needless to say that fans of the series may not like what they see here. Many of the characters that appear have been heavily doctored, most notably Takumi's chain smoking father, who is now depicted as an alcoholic, a womaniser and a child-beater (!) There are other character changes too, most of them I didn't welcome but none proved to be particularly damaging to the movie as a whole. That said, the acting isn't exceedingly bad, especially considering that the lead role was given to a Taiwanese pop-musician, although it did leave much to be desired in places, as did the plot or rather, lack of one. Some of the car races aren't that good either, relying too heavily on "fade to black" shots, most notably at the beginning when one car passes another. The final race at the end, however, was the most spectacular and equal to anything Hollywood could have produced.
Overall, it was worth watching, exceeding my admittedly low expectations and possessing more entertainment value than the vast majority of movies to come out of Hong Kong.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not perfect, but pretty good, September 9, 2005
I watched this movie with pretty low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. I was a bit shocked at how many of the characters and races that the movie left out from the manga, but I still think that the movie was true to the overall feel and spirit of Initial D. Anime enthusiasts will definitely be dissappointed by the hip-hop soundtrack and the lack of detail paid to some of the supporting cast, but I'm sure they will appreciate the careful attention paid to detail on the characters they do show. I love the characters, but Initial D started out for me as a love for the cars. That being said, it was great to see real versions of the cars drifting around corners and getting so much screen time. By no means is this a perfect movie, but the great characters, creative camera work and smooth drift scenes are good enough to make me look past it's flaws and enjoy it for what it is - a kick @$$ car movie based on one of the best anime series ever created. Highly recommended for car enthusiasts and Initial D fans anywhere.
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