Initial D (2005)

Fantastic!

Brilliant and touching

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

There's a very odd background to this car racing movie, clearly aimed at the teenage crowd in Asia. It's based on a Japanese anime of the same name of the 1990s, and filmed in Japan with Japanese characters. And yet it's a Chinese film, in Cantonese language, with mainly Chinese actors playing the Japanese roles. Despite (or maybe because of) all this, INITIAL D: DRIFT RACER turns out to be a very middling type of film, although it is a damn sight better than the most execrable the genre has to offer (SPEED RACER).Still, INITIAL D does deserve credit for making repeated scenes of cars racing on the same stretch of road throughout interesting, but the car chases are merely perfunctory and hardly the best thing about this. For a film based around racing, the film has much better characterisation than you'd expect, even if the central casting left me cold (I've never been able to warm to Jay Chou and that doesn't change here). The characters are far more realistic and their motivations more believable than in an average FAST AND FURIOUS film, for example.There are welcome supporting roles for Edison Chen and Shawn Yue, who at least have the movie star charisma that Chou lacks, and Anthony Wong is a welcome presence as ever in a comedic supporting role playing Chou's dad. Chapman To bags the 'idiotic friend' role but his character does grow on you throughout, although the female characters in the cast are particularly ill served by the script. INITIAL D: DRIFT RACER is hardly a good film but it passes the time well enough for fans of Asian cinema, even if it is a film I'd never want to watch again.

Like most of the reviews said, the ONLY good thing about this movie was the driving and the cars. The stunt people they hired for this movie did a great job driving and tearing up the roads (the ONLY reason why it even got 3 stars from me). Unfortunately there wasn't even that much driving!! The cars were also almost exactly modified and painted like the anime, which I thought was pretty impressive.As for the movie, they pretty much threw the first three stages of the anime in a blender, pureed it to a bloody pulp, farted in it a few times, then poured half of it in a cup and dumped it on a film reel.(Spoilers/Things that ruined the movie) They make Bunta a complete drunken good for nothing jerk, yet ends up showing up at one of Takumi's races..Somehow they found a way to make Itsuki even more annoying.Itsuki and Kioshiro are combined as one character and Yuichi (gas station boss) is his dad..Keisuke is written out of the script and replaced by Takeshi of the Night Kids..Kazumi (Itsuki's love) is a steady worker at the gas station..Kyoichi (Evo III driver) wrecks his car by driving off of Mt. Akina and crashes it similarly to the ending of Tokyo Drift..ALL the races take place on Akina.

I enjoyed this movie very much. I was able to pick up on some things that weren't with the story pretty quick, but since WHEN do the books / movies EVER match? Many of the characters were right-on no matter what, and some of them formed unexpected alliances. I found it all to be a pretty cool mix-up. The pause screen before switching to the next frame was a little weird, felt comic-bookish though. The happy 'relatonship' music was the funniest thing ever. SPOILER: I thought it was hilarious when he started choking, the music got extremely loud and fluttery, and she was there preforming the Heimlich maneuver. Yeah! That's exactly how I am going to get my dates from now on. I think in the movie they should have pushed her more out of the storyline. All they did was introduce her, send her away to be a whore, and then come back. :END SPOILEROverall the movie was very entertaining and worth watching. I was left thinking about it for the next couple days after watching it. Decent voice overs as well!

OK, firstly, I see all you guys complaining about how gay the movie was. Well really, I've lots of movie based on books and animes and none of them are perfect. All you people think it is really easy to make a film based on a book or manga. The reasons why I liked the movie is because...1. It was pretty funny especially Chapman To 2. The cars were all real and based on the anime and manga 3. They did all the basics in the anime and mangaI just don't get why all you people are complaining? As i said earlier, hardly any movie is 100% based onto the anime, manga or book. And as long as it entertains people, who cares?