www.seipokai.com

I just came back from watchin Initial D the movie. As usual i try to go into the cinema with an open mind. i wasnt disappointed, and i wasnt very well entertained by it. I could understand why the producers had to change majority parts of the original story line, trying to fit in the original storyline would be impossible. I really enjoyed how the directors display the relationship between Bunta and Takumi, which was far from fatherly love. And Anthony Wong was a real gem in the movie like he always has in his past movies. Lots of comedy in the movie. The part where Takumi had to drag his drunk father up to his room was really funny. The guy playing Itsuki was funny as hell as well. The drifting parts was exceptional. A very fine display of actual drifting skills. All in all there was only 3 scenes they had to use CGI, one was when the black Evo III crashed, where Takumi’s engine blew up and the other when Takumi displayed his ‘godly’ driving techniques a.k.a the drain move. But the drifting was very realistic. Don’t expect any flare at all, the directors and the producers tried to make the movie as realistic as possible and they did a fairly good job at it.
Surprisingly Jay Chou displayed very well acting for his first out-take in the silver screens. He did a convincing job mimicking Takumi’s silly and blur as hell character, or maybe Jay Chou personally is like that? Who knows… bottomline is he was convincing enough to be Takumi. And Anne Suzuki as Natsuki… *drool* The parts displaying the good times and worst time of Takumi and Natsuki was very well executed. I think i saw a few girls shedding a few tears and some sniffs.

Lets go to the parts i hate shall we? 1stly the editing, the guys tried to mimic the anime and the comic representation. Personally i think it was too rushed. The camera work is a bit shoddy at times as well. 2ndly the directors representation of how Takumi blew his engine. It just wasn’t convincing enough. In the comics and anime, Takumi literally blew a hole in his engine, spewed hot engine oil all over the car and the windscreen and he lost control of the car and skidded to a stop by the side of the road. In the movie they made a short CGI part showing the car mechanicals where the pistons was red hot and suddenly it just stops, the car loses power and slows down to lethargic stop. I was seriously hoping that the producers actually try to represent that in the movie according to the comics as much as possible and was very disappointed. There are other parts of the movie which i hated as well but thanks to Anthony Wong’s exceptional representation of Bunta, he overcompensated for the lack of girth in the storyline. Point is: go into the cinema with an open mind, be awed by the drifting, have a good laugh and basically enjoy a good time. This is strictly a pop corn flick… Initial D fanatics i think you might want to stick to the anime or the comics. One thing is for sure, the drifting are top notch stuff. If you’re open minded enough, go and have good fun.