Initial D

Takumi and Matsuki take a selfie at the beach with a disposable camera. This predates the selfie that Paris Hilton claims she invented along with Britney Spears in 2006 by 1 year.

Takumi is a high schooler who often delivers his fathers tofu late at night. His late night trips have made him adept at the winding down hill run of Mt. Akina, which is a course used by the street racers of the area as the ultimate test of skill. When an unintentional race brings him to the notice of the racers, his life changes as he has to field numerous offers to actually see who is the best driver.

Based on a Japanese comic and cartoon, Initial D is a live action Chinese film thats broken box office records across Asia. Despite being a huge animation fan I've never seen the animation nor have a I read the comic. I'm not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing, but seeing how many fans of the source material are unhappy with the film I would say its a good thing.

Flat out I liked this movie. It did take a while to warm up to, but once I began to take it for what it is I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Is it a great film? In someways yes and in others no. As I said this takes a bit to get going. The lead is a bit too closed mouth for my taste, barely uttering a word for the entire two hours. Its a bit too teen angsty. Still you have great characters and great performances by pretty much everyone in the cast (even if everyone was speaking three or four different languages when this was filmed.

The racing is excellent. Its mostly seems to have been done with out CGI enhancement. I like that there are no horrific crashes, police chases or other clichéd events that are so rampant in American movies. And while I was initially apprehensive by the fact the racing is always on the same stretch of road, I warmed to the idea since by doing that we really got to see who was best. (If you want American style racing in many different environments stay away)

Definitely worth a look see, especially if you want to see a race film that is not like all of the rest. 7.5 out of 10 rounded up to 8 out of 10 for IMDb purposes.

That's about it. The race scenes were shot pretty decently. They grip the viewers at the edge of their seat. The songs by Jay Chow are pretty good. The movie is funny. It was set and filmed in Japan, yet all the dialogue were in Cantonese. What else is there to say?

Jay Chow was pretty good for his first starring role. He gave a believable performance. Anthony Wong is his same reliable self and Chapman To again provides comic relieve (seems like he is typecast now).

The movie did not follow its inspiration, the manga. Even though Jay Chow's character is low-key and mild-mannered already, in the manga the character is even more mild-mannered and even less intense. In the manga, the dad seemed to be more responsible and nicer. That does not matter though, because the races are entertaining enough. That is one of two reason why people pack the theaters to see it. The other reason? Jay Chow. Do not underestimate his draw power. This guy is an idol in Asia. Whatever he do is gold.

This film is made for entertainment purposes. No depth. No plot. Just watch it and have a good time.

7/10, because it is entertaining. Take that out, a 4.

I haven't read any Initial D manga, and frankly, hadn't heard of it until a friend asked to watch this movie, thus cannot comment on the accuracy of the story.

But after watching the movie for the 10th time, I can freely say the movie is a must-see for car lovers, and goes beyond Hollywood fake races, which makes speed and fancy cars seem more important than the driver's ability. The actors did a great job, too, specially Bunta Fujiwara (Takumi's father), who plays hilarious scenes.

Not to mention the Soundtrack, which is great add to the competition scenes.

Overall, I'll have to say right off the bat that as a fan of the original anime I found it somewhat amusing.

There are a few things that the movie does right. The camera angles and the overall feel of the movie was spot-on to the original source material. A particular highlight was the "zoom-in-on-the-eyes" of the loser in one particular race. This was exactly like the anime, and was a great touch.

People might slam Jay Chou, but I thought he did a good job in this. It's rather hard to screw up a character who is generally bored and half-asleep (as he is portrayed in the anime).

There are a lot of small changes here and there, such as Bunta being a drunkard for comedy relief, and the complete lack of Keisuke (his character was combined with Nakazato). Or the fact that the anime Nakazato drove the 4WD GT-R model of Skyline, and did not drift. I won't touch on these in detail, as they didn't really bother me that much.

However, the biggest element lacking in this is the music! Inital D fans know that Initial D is known for it's high energy dance-style J-pop music. Considering there are at least 10 Initial D soundtrack CD's out in Japan, I can't believe they didn't realize how popular the music is.

The music in the film is best described as "Chinese rap/R&B" I guess, which really hurt the feel of the movie in my opinion.

As synonymous the anime is with the music, I can't help but think what it would be without it. We'd be left with scenes of car racing with cheesy dialog, intertwined with brief romance scenes. Which now that I think of it, pretty much sums up this film.

If they were to make an Initial D anime series with music similar to this movie's soundtrack, I wonder if I would like it as much.

I just might feel the same way about it as I do this movie, in that it's a nice reminiscent film somewhat faithful to the original, but nothing to get really excited about.

If you're not a fan of Inital D or of import racing, there's not much for you here.