SPECIAL ID (特殊身份) DVD (2013)




SYNOPSIS: Undercover cop Chan Tze Lung (Donnie Yen) has spent years in the underworld collecting evidence against boss Bear (Collin Chou). After suffering major losses in business, Bear starts to suspect his followers of betrayal putting Chan's safety at risk. Hoping to go back to a normal life, Chan pledges to his supervisor Cheung (Ronald Cheng) that he'll bust the whole operation in one fell swoop and return to his police identity. On the orders of Bear and the poilce, Chan heads to Hainan to meet his former buddy, triad upstart Sunny (Andy On) whom Bear suspects to be the traitor. Chased by a mysterious assassin once he sets foot in China, Chan realises not only can he not conceal his identity, his life is also on the line.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Just when you are rubbing your hands anticipating a gritty, hard-hitting Donnie Yen action flick, Special ID disappointingly turned out to be a dud.

The premise is simple enough as scripted by the late Szeto Kam Yuen. Donnie plays Tze Lung, an undercover cop assigned to collect evidence against a gang boss, Xiong (Collin Chou). After Xiong starts to suspect there’s a mole around him, Tze Lung fearing for her mum (Paw Hee Ching) and his own safety wants out but his supervisor Cheung (Ronald Cheng) has other plans. He wants him to go to Hainan to team up with the local police, Fang Jing (Jing Tian) to take down Xiong’s operations and one of Tze Lung’s ex-followers, Sunny (Andy On).   

While SPL and Flash Point are straightforward good cops versus the baddies macho action movies, Special ID tries to thrown in a romantic angle that involves Tze Lung and Fang Jing right in the middle. The treatment in the end is ridiculously stiff and awkward. To make matters worse, the character of Tze Lung is an embarrassing mama’s boy and obviously contradicts with his tough, non-compromising cop persona. 

There are simply too many elements, which director Clarence Fok got it wrong even though everything is laid out in plain sight and assembled in front of him. For those who are expecting another showdown between Donnie and Collin after their exhilarating match in Flash Point, it’s better you walk away from this review right now. The character of Xiong is weakly written with Chou being non-existent during most of the screentime. The main villain here happened to be Andy On’s Sunny yet another paper-thin bad guy who randomly walked into the story so that Donnie can have an opponent to spar with. Not forgetting Mainland star Zhang Hanyu (Assembly) has a pointless, forgettable role as an assassin.    

Despite all the problems, Donnie Yen who serves as action choreographer delivers the goods after all. I meant the action chops of course. The opening scene in a mahjong parlour has Tze Lung fighting against action veteran star Ken Lo and it looks promising enough. The most impressive sequence comes later on when Tze Lung takes on a number of Sunny’s henchmen in a restaurant equipped with some crazy MMA moves. The prolonged climax, which involved Donnie taking on Andy On end up to be quite a lethargic, repetitive affair with an unnecessary CG, aided car chase thrown in.

You are unlikely convince by Jing Tian’s splendid choreographed kicks or another of Andy On’s generic arrogant baddie role. Special ID entertains purely because of Donnie Yen. Just ignore all the missteps of the plotting, go ahead and root for Donnie.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Trailer

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The DVD comes with dual Mandarin and Cantonese soundtracks. The grittiness on the visual is intended and the most annoying bit is the accompanied sound effects and music, which sounds either too loud or too muted at times.

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee


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 ABOUT THE MOVIE

Genre: Action/Crime
Starring: Donnie Yen, Collin Chou, Andy On, Tian Jing, Zhang Hanyu, Ronald Cheng, Paw Hee Ching
Director: Clarence Fok
Rating: NC16 (Violence and Coarse Language)
Year Made: 2013

 SPECIAL FEATURES

- NIL

 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Languages: Mandarin/Cantonese
Subtitles: English/Chinese
Aspect Ratio: 16x9 Widescreen
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0
Running Time: 1 hr 38 mins
Region Code: 3
Distributor: Scorpio East Entertainment