Movie Review: Special ID/特殊身份

Donnie Yen grinds coffee beans with his teeth and boils the water with his own rage.

Bruce Lee is dead. Jackie Chan and Jet Li are old.

And Donnie Yen is no spring chicken.

He’s certainly aging well; he retains an awful lot of speed and agility even as he’s pushing 50.

But the other half of the equation for aging action stars is the choice of whether or not to start focusing on their acting.

This happens when their fading their physical capacity makes it less and less possible for the audience

to be distracted from their dramatic shortcomings by their physical prowess.

Jet Li has worked on his acting. Jackie Chan… may have.

I don’t know, because I don’t watch his movies any more.

But Donnie still has some time left before acting becomes a necessity.

And both edges of that sword are on display in Special ID/特殊身份 .

An undercover Hong Kong cop is sent to China to help catch a criminal he once mentored.

Aiding him in this endeavor is a young mainland female police officer played by Tian Jing.

God didn’t make that chin. Or nose.

They meet when Donnie intentionally bumps her Volvo. With his Volvo.

Which somehow winds up being driven by Terence Yin.

It may not be exactly the same car, but it’s the same model and the same color.

But don’t worry. Donnie has another Volvo with which to chase Terence.

But Volvo isn’t paying me to talk about them, so forget all that.

Let’s talk about the actors and the story.

My favorite mainland actor, Zhang Hanyu, plays a small role whose only real function in the movie is making you wonder what his part was like before the scrīpt got diddled like a roofied cheerleader.

“Tell me why you’re in this movie!!!”

Andy On plays the bad guy, whose back story and character motivations are buried in a shallow grave somewhere in the New Territories.

When news breaks…. it’s because Andy On hit it. 

Terence Yin plays a paranoid nutcase of a sidekick whose impact could have been greater if he was anything more than set dressing. 

But one thing to be grateful for in **Special ID/特殊身份   is a small part; if your part is big enough, it will eventually drag you into the dramatic sinkholes that take up the non-action portions of the film.**

Collin Chou is actually pretty good in a decent-sized role and manages to entertain as well as convince.

“Why you gotta mention size?”

But the same cannot really be said of Donnie Yen.

He simply doesn’t have the dramatic skills to carry the story, and all the brooding in the world isn’t going to change it.

Donnie Yen broods Magnum.

I had Tweeted that the non-action portions of the movie should be called Special Ed, and that goes even more for the final scene of the film.

阿甘.

Donnie’s manifestation of happiness in this scene is not only incongruous, it is literally out of character, and it’s the worst example of what I want to call ‘Mainland overstatement.’

Movies made for China often have this kind of overacting.

Watch the trailer for Badges of Fury.

It’s so over the top it’s ridiculous.

But Badges of Fury was a comedy. **Special ID/特殊身份   isn’t.**

Well, it isn’t supposed to be.

Just like tattoos aren’t supposed to be temporary. But in Special ID they are!

You know what?

For some weird reason, I just don’t want to beat up this movie that badly.

The action in **Special ID/特殊身份   goes a fair way to redeeming the dramatic and narrative shortcomings.**

A prolonged car chase is a lot of fun to watch, especially since it’s edited well and the special effects are done well enough that it looks like Tian Jing did a lot of dangerous and even impossible stunt work, and I know that’s not true.

Step Up 6: Shanghai Skydance

What is true is that she’s amazingly limber. And I don’t mean that in any sort of haam sup way whatsoever. If you watch the movie you’ll see what I mean. 

But the action is often derailed by the same sort of Mainland overstatement. More than once, Donnie’s final punch or kick is presented in a way that could only be described as comic book. So too are some of the stunts outrageously bad. 

Still, I think it would be unfair to dwell on the bad part of the action, because the good parts are really good.

The emphasis on MMA makes the fights more realistic looking (I guess), but less cinematically impressive. Still, they are effective, entertaining, and managed to make me wince more than once.

Andy On once again plays Donnie’s punching bag, and as usual makes it evident that he put in a lot of hard, painful work on this film. 

He wishes he had Nick Cheung’sUnbeatable shoulder.

So if you want to watch a mindless action movie, **Special ID/特殊身份   will probably be a lot of fun.**

As for the non-action parts of the film, they’re entertaining too, just for all the wrong reasons.