Initial D
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Movie Reviews of Initial D
Movie Review: Clear Your Mind of the Anime Before Watching
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm not a car fan, nor a racing fan, but when I stumbled upon the anime, I loved it. So, even though I knew the live action film wouldn't be the same, I still looked forward to seeing it. As I have never read the manga, any comparisons I make are between the anime and the live action versions.
Like any movie that is adapted from another souce, they made changes, some significant - Bunta, Takumi's father is a womanizing alcoholic who abuses his son, and Itsuki is a braggard,, rather than the nerdy side kick - both revisions did not appeal to me. On the other hand, Jay Chou, who plays Takumi, did an excellent job of projecting the personality of the character in the anime, and which is part of the appeal for the story - a kid who doesn't know or like cars is a better racer than those obsessed by cars - and then finds focus in his life by racing.
I think the problem with this film is that it tries to do too much. This is worse for viewers familiar with the anime or manga because character and racing development takes place in leaps, rather than steps. Even for viewers who come in with no knowledge of the characters, sometimes you wonder where they are coming from - and basically, I think it comes from trying to imitate the major points from the original story without spending the time to develop it. On the other hand, the movie does revise characters' personalities and histories, so it is also trying to add some original touches. In the end, the movie is neither original, nor a faithful adaptation for the hard-core anime fans.
For me, the movie itself is a two star rating, but might be a 2 1/2 for those who give higher priority to visual racing scenes, or three for those not familiar with the anime - but as far as the Amazon rating stars, it still gets two because, as other reviews have stated, those trailers in the beginning are really annoying. Not only did I spend some extra time trying to skip past the trailers, but when the movie finally started, I realized that I forgot to set the sub-titles and had to sit through the trailers again. If you are going to watch this movie, make sure to see it in one sitting - it's just not worth having to sit through the trailers just to get to the movie and then getting to the point you left off at.
Movie Review: Great car stunts, but very poor casting
Summary: 2 Stars
I love racing films. I've watched this HK adaptation of Initial D twice, first time without any knowledge of the original manga and anime, and second time recently after I'd watched all the free episodes of the anime series on Hulu. The first time I watched this movie I thought the car stunts were great -- I had been a fan of the Ridge Racer games so I was familiar with drifting -- but hated the cast. Understandably so, I liked the film even less the 2nd time around. The natural coolness of Takumi is just not there, and Anthony Wang's rendition of Bunta is completely trash (even though the Euroasian Wang is an otherwise excellent actor). The Japanese supporting cast is amateurish, including Anne Suzuki as Mogi. (The only bearable guy is the Kyouichi character.) There is no chemistry between any of the characters, and the changes in plot were frustrating to watch after I'd seen the anime. Still, I decided to give this 2 stars because the car stunts, performed mostly by the Takahashi Racing Team (owned by a guy surnamed Takahashi, like Ryosuke and Keisuke!), are just incredible. I especially love the three-car race at the end and wonder how they coordinated the sequence... For the drifting stunts alone and only for the drifting stunts alone, this is a worthy movie for racing fans to watch and own.Movie Review: LONG forced trailers before the movie starts!
Summary: 2 Stars
Popped the DVD into my Denon DVD player and it started playing VERY long opening trailers...which you could NOT skip. Only buttons on the remote that worked were eject, stop, and power off.
Tai Seng - the big US studios know not to do this in North America, maybe you need to learn a lesson.
This was not a free DVD, it was purchased for me to watch, let me skip the trailers.
Movie was pretty good, but I would have doubts about buying this DVD and supporting this sort of forced advertising on a DVD you bought with your hard-earned money.
Movie Review: Poor Marketing
Summary: 1 Stars
This is a DVD that has to be started 10 minutes before you're actually ready to sit down and watch the movie because THERE ARE 10 MINUTES OF PREVIEWS WHICH YOU CANNOT SKIP OR FAST FORWARD. I was so pissed off by that, that by the time it let me start the movie, I just could NOT find a way to enjoy it.
An hour into the movie, I stopped it and found something else to do. I didn't try to finish watching it until at least a week later (after, of course, doing something else while the 10 minutes of unskippable previews played out). But I was still so burned about that abrasive form of advertising that I still couldn't get into it.
To this day, every time I hear "Initial D" the first thing that springs into my mind is how pissed off that DVD makes me. I like to watch movie trailers, but only AFTER I've watched the feature presentation, NOT EVERY BLOODY TIME I SIMIPLY LOAD THE DVD!
Oh, and as for the movie itself, another thing that annoyed me was the language select. When watching foreign films, I prefer listening to the original language. Being a 2005 Hong Kong film, you'd think it were Cantonese, but I couldn't figure out whether it was supposed to be Cantonese or Mandarin. I later found out this is one of those films where the actors all speak their mother tongues, then the final production is dubbed at whichever scenes don't match the target language. Silly me, I tried cycling through the language channels when *Japanese* actors were talking (there is no Japanese Audio on the U.S. DVD), so of course I never found the channel that sync'd right. (I did later find out that Cantonese is the "main" language.)
I'm not sure if I'll ever bother trying to watch this again. Aside from the annoyance of having to wait through 10 minutes of previews every time I want to watch the movie, I didn't find the story very interesting. I'm not a car-guy, so I'm not easily captivated by watching people compete to see who can be the fastest jerk on the road without breaking the tofu. (I'd rather just play Carmageddon.)
Movie Review: Hahaha..
Summary: 1 Stars
What a sad attempt at bringing an amazing anime to movie. It is entertaining but if you expect it to be anything like the anime, you will be sorely dissapointed. They have changed the characters around, (Personalities) taken some characters out and changed plot lines. If you have never seen the anime perhaps you will enjoy it. Else wise, blah!