Special ID (2013)

I really liked the plot of this movie. It was clear why they were fighting. But the fight scenes in this movie seemed to be very stretched out. One fight scene took 10 minutes which lost my attention halfway.If they had shorter fight scenes and developed the ending a bit more it would have been a good movie. Another complaint I also had was that in the movie they were using Mandarin,Cantonese,and English randomly. I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if they actually planned out what to say in Cantonese and what to say in Mandarin. In the beginning I asummed this "whole" movie was going to be in Cantonese but only 1/3 part of movie was in Cantonese and 2/3 of it was in Mandarin. Either make this movie in "mainly" in Cantonese or "mainly" in Mandarin so it is easier to follow>:( But I really like how they did the stunts though.
FYI: This movie has no humor.

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"If you don't change it yourself, one day it'll change you"

The only things special about Special ID were Donnie Yen and the bone crunching fights. The story retread most of the gangster clichés and struggled to be consistent.

Donnie Yen played Chen Zi Long, a deep undercover police officer. He's ready to go back to active duty but as always he's required to do one more job. He's trying to bring down Boss Xiong (Ngai Sing) but along comes his old buddy Sunny (Andy On) who has acquired his own gang and gone bonkers evil. Then much to his chagrin he's partnered with a mainland cop, Fang Jing (Jing Tian). Throw in a super tight relationship with his mom that takes up a lot of air time and Chen is afraid that he is close to having his cover blown which would put his mama in danger.

Special ID started out as a gritty gangland drama but then seemed to lose focus. The relationship between Chen and Fang seemed especially confusing as it went back and forth trying to decide if it was going to be a buddy cop adventure or a romance or antagonistic work friends. Without explanation, a lot of time was invested in Chen's relationship with his mother. The movie had a real identity crisis that never quite resolved itself. Thankfully, plot is not the priority in a movie like this. Donnie went all out for his fight choreography. His fight with Ken Lo was brutal and showed that Ken still has it, watch for him to go into the splits! As often happens, one fight multiplied and the next thing you know Donnie was fighting a knife wielding gang. His final fight with Andy mixed in some MMA grappling along with his martial arts, mostly it was a vicious no holds barred fight to the death. Bruce Law's car chase choreography was brilliant. While Fang Jing seemed out of place at times, the car chase with her and Sunny wrestling inside and outside a Land Rover at full speed was death defying and amazingly shot.

Donnie did an excellent job as the battle weary undercover cop, even when his character was passively dragged from one place to the next. Andy's Sunny wasn't very well drawn but he made for a serviceable Baddie. Jing Tian seemed far too slight to be the badass she was supposed to play, but made the most of the female sidekick role with all it's cringey dialogue. It was good to see old timer Ken Lo showing off some of his Muy Thai and Taekwondo moves early in the movie.

As I stated, there wasn't anything creative or consistent about the story but that's not usually the draw to a Donnie Yen movie anyway. The fights were deliciously creative and consistently good showing that Donnie is a master at what he does best. I just wish the story had been stronger so that I could have rated this higher.



9/4/22

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