Identidade Especial

I'm always surprise that Donnie Yeh has not exploded onto America like Jackie Chan or Jet Li. I saw a biography on the man and learned that he spent a lot of his childhood in the states and as such speaks better English than the average Chinese action star who basically just learned how to read lines in English. Kind of Ironic, and added to the fact that The Don is more attractive than his peers you would think Hollywood would be knocking on his door, Or maybe they are and Donnie chooses to stay away from the headaches the ones that came before him had to go through.

Special ID shows the kind of hands-on film making Donnie gets to do in his native land. The action sequences are long and energetic like I would expect from a Kung Fu flick, and never let down. What I love best is the martial arts sequences are very contemporary with what's going on today. The Don does the traditional high speed flying kicks that are trade mark in Kung Fu, but I noticed that Donnie is using the rapid punches that remind me of his role as Ip Man. I also notice that mixed martial arts seems to have influenced the fights in this movie with a lot of low to the floor fighting which actually made the conflicts realer for me. Outside the fight choreography, there was also an awesome chase scene as well.

Donnie plays a police officer who wants to take down China's most ruthless crime syndicate. In order to do this he has to go deep undercover, but when the mob boss suspects a traitor in his ranks, Don as "Dragon" Chan, is in trouble of getting his cover blown and his life ended, which puts him in conflict with his duty as a police official. His best ally is Fang Jing, an officer who puts herself on the line and in the action. I love noting more than to see a woman who is more than just eye candy to the action hero (but she does do eye candy very well).

Another highlight for me is one of The Antagonist's henchmen Sunny played by Andy Oh. He spoke a lot of English in the film for reasons I did not fully get, but this may have help with me relating to the character, as I did not have to read what he was saying, but the fight scene between he and The Don was brilliant.

Once again the Don delivers a worth wild Action flick, to add on to the many reasons why Hollywood does a disservice to itself sleeping on his skills, but it's probably for the best as an American made Special ID just would not be the same.

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You really have to wonder how a film like "Special ID" (2013) gets an average IMDb rating of 5.3 out of 10 while something like "The Hobbit" (2012) gets an 8.0. People have truly lost their sense of priorities while watching action films. Read some reviews of "Special ID" and you'll see all kinds of petty criticisms, from language dialects to overly decorated restaurants! Here's a newsflash for you. For an action film to satisfy, it needs a minimum of two things: good action and brisk pacing. Guess what. "Special ID" easily meets this standard and in fact surpasses it with some truly memorable action sequences. Sure, the script is boilerplate and basic (even a bit clumsy in spots), but that doesn't automatically tank the enjoyability of a film that focuses first and foremost on the action anyways.

A cop (Donnie Yen) and his team of comrades go undercover in one of China's most ruthless underworld organizations to stop a gang leader. Andy On plays a good villain, while Tian Jing is a likable female lead. The action in this film is spaced out nicely, which assists the pacing quite well. The fight choreography is less "showy", opting to reflect a realistic, scrappy form of fist-fighting with some mixed martial arts peppered in. The finale lasts a whopping 15 minutes and showcases a suspenseful car chase. This actioner definitely satisfies.

The director here is Clarence Fok, who has a hit or miss filmography but has given us some fun movies in the past – "The Iceman Cometh" (1989) and "Black Panther Warriors" (1994) being two fairly brainless crowd-pleasers that stand out. He has also contributed some truly riveting dramas. For example, his crime drama "Century of the Dragon" (1999) is one of the best triad films of the past 15 years. Overall, the direction in "Special ID" is solid during the action, with some very cool sweeping shots during the lengthy car chase.

Unfortunately, Clarence should have vetoed some of the scoring choices in "Special ID" because the background music got intrusive at times. The sound design of this film feels amateurish and cheap early on, but get better as it progresses. This shouldn't be too much of a problem for fans of old school Hong Kong action flicks from the 80s and 90s, which many times had consistently poor production values but nevertheless succeeded at providing pure entertainment value. At the very least, "Special ID" looks nice while it gives the viewers its fist-to-face goodies.

bad casting, directing and worst of all, the careless decision by using the every actor's original voice. how could it possible that the mother's tone and accent is pure mandarin Chinese, a northern dialect accent, while the son speaking in cantonese accented Chinese? unless this so-called undercover son is adopted by a hongkongness foster parents and later reunited with his real mother, we could never get used to such big difference of accents between mother and son. and then, this guy's superior officer, my, is such a bad cast, who not in the least like a pencil pusher high ranking police office but an accounting clerk. then, the other two gang-bangers' stereo types are so lame and so formulaic, no big difference from their other roles in so many similar genre movies. i just wish donnie yen and all the cast in this movie speaking pure cantonese that at least the whole movie might look more convincing. but the stupid production people decided to cast a fragile Chinese doll to be the case officer from the mainland china and forced a awkward and embarrassing romance between the hongkongness undercover and her, their scenes just looked so contrite and unnatural. the mother role was also a cast of totally unnecessary. the dialog is also so stupid and contrite. this movie in general is a disaster from the very beginning to the end, simply ruined by a stupid screenplay, wrong cast, wrong accents, wrong arrangements almost every thing. to me, giving this movie 3 stars is already over-rated.

Pardon for my bad English, I am not writing a full review but only posting some of my personal thoughts after watching the movie.

1. The trailer spoils some of the exciting fight scenes in this movie. 2. Lower your expectation and you will still be entertained. 3. Not quite the martial art movie if you come all the way from SPL and Flashpoint 4. The fighting choreography does not come from Donnie Yen himself, I suppose. 5. The fighting is realistic, however, more true to the real street fighting than ever. 6. The car chasing scenes and the stunts are awesome, better than the fight, maybe. 7. Not a bad story, but without twist and very straight forward. You will not get the same story impact and the strong feeling for vengeance like SPL and Flashpoint. 8. I am a little disappointed that the final battle does not carry the same furiousness I experienced from SPL and Flashpoint. 9. Having saying that, it makes both SPL and Flashpoint a classics. 10.I should have just give it a 5-star, but 1 more star to salute Donnie Yen for trying something new, trying to create another variant to his already awesome movie collections.

My rating : 6/10

PS I found that the Young Detective Dee is a more entertaining movie if you want some cool fights.

Oh dear, this is really sad. Following something of a career revival with the outstanding Sha Po Lang, Ip Man and Wu Xia, Donnie Yen has really been unable to maintain the quality of his efforts. I fear he is slowly falling back to the ranks of cheesy unrespected action movies with which he had been associated for most of his career. With The Last Bladesman, The Return of Chen Zhen, 14 Blades and now Special ID, he's been having more misses than hits.

When teasers for Special ID started to appear, Internet excitement started to mount that this could be the sequel to SPL that we had all hoped Flash Point would have been. Alas, that is not the case.

Yen plays undercover cop Dragon Chan, doing the usual bad guy routine to get into the good books of the triad bosses. When trouble starts to brew in China with connections to one of his former underlings, his boss, Captain Cheung (Ronald Cheng), sends Yen out to work with Mainland Chinese police to crack the case. One last case before he can return to being a normal beat cop. Sounds good on paper but the execution is a sad state of affairs.

In China, Yen uses his usual unorthodox methods to meet up and reacquaint with his old buddy turned crime boss, Sunny (Andy On). Yen, predictable for a movie, is an unpredictable and reckless cop, which rubs his China police partner Fang Jing (Tian Jing) the wrong way. This is intended to introduce some spark and chemistry between the two but sadly falls flat, mostly due to the fact that Tian Jing looks like she's about 12 years old besides Donnie.

Of course while out in China, some rather unnecessary twists are introduced to keep things exciting, but they just didn't work and really didn't make a lot of sense.

In the end, what we have is an extremely forgettable action movie and another strike out for Yen.

What I liked about this movie was Tian Jing, with some of the best stunts in the movie and a memorable car chase sequence; she stole the best scene in the movie. Agreed she appears too small and frail to pose any real danger. She is, however, surprisingly quite convincing as a martial artist, exhibiting some pretty fancy and gutsy moves.

I look forward to seeing her in Jackie Chan's upcoming Police Story 2013.

What I didn't like was Donnie Yen's character. It is repeatedly reiterated that Yen's character is stupid but he can fight. We're no longer in the 80s where an action hero can get by just on brawn. No one wants to root for a stupid character but unfortunately that's how Yen's character is written. This is a far cry from Yen's character in SPL, a smart, super cool detective who wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Yen's character in this is just a silly caricature, like something out of a kid's movie. Also worthy of note is the criminal underuse of Collin Chou. Nope, no Donnie vs Collin this time.

Andy On is pretty good as the bad guy and did a decent job of making his fights against Yen believable. Though what was not believable was why he would be doing all the dirty work himself if he was such an up and coming big-time crime boss, surely he would have sent some of his lackeys to take care of business.

Agreed, no one comes to a Donnie Yen movie expecting Shakespeare, they want to see some ass kicking. So how are the action scenes? Again, mediocre at best. The earlier fights were sloppy, likely in an attempt to make our protagonist appear human and vulnerable. Later fights improve somewhat but could have been cut and pasted from so many other generic action movies. The final fight is good but a lot of us would have already seen it in the most recent extended trailer.

Special ID is a pretty solid disappointment on all levels. What I loved about both SPL and Wu Xia is that they were both powerful dramas, the fighting was restrained and there were actually only a few fight sequences. This served to make the movies more believable and actually made the action sequences more memorable and impactful.

I can't bring myself to recommend this. Rather I recommend, if you haven't seen SPL – go and get it now!

Rating 5 out of 10.

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