Popular reviews

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  Review by Todd Gaines ★★★ 11

  Yip Man as a cop deep undercover and in serious danger of having his cover exposed in a film that features Donnie Yen doing shit you would expect Donnie Yen to do. Neck crack. Extreme Mahjong. Age ain't nothing but a number. Just watch Donnie fight and see why. Nose kick. Sleeper hold. Birthday party. The way Donnie wears his party hat. Wannabe Wangstas. A shovel can fuck a motherfucker up if used correctly. Vidal Sassoon's nephew. I'm not the biggest fan of neck tattoos but Donnie's neck tat is kinda pimp. Donnie almost looks as cool as Tequila from Hard Boiled with a toothpick in his mouth. The cop with glasses makes Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds look…

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  Review by Mr. DuLac ★★★ 2

  You've got a lot to learn kid.
  -Chan Chi-Lung

  After a string of period dramas/action films Donnie Yen returns to contemporary crime thrillers with a crap load of new tricks up his sleeve as far as fight choreography goes. To say that Yen has continually evolved as an action choreographer is an understatement.

  You need only look at his various action films of the last decade and you can see that Yen not only adapts to various styles of martial arts, but he can also adapt his action sequences with different tones (comedic, dramatic, tragic) and with his return to modern times in Special ID he shows that the time period has tremendous effect on his characters fighting styles as…

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★½

  Great action scenes especially the ones involving the vehicles and the grand finale of course! I didn't mind the drama in between the action shots but I could have done without the love interest aspect of the film which I maintain took the film down a notch in my not so humble opinion!

  Enjoyed the fight scenes, it kept me engaged and entertained!

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  Review by More_Badass ★★★½ 3

  Boilerplate HK undercover-cop popcorn, with a lighter tone than most, but Clarence Fok executes that boilerplate as a rock-solid sturdy-as-hell throwback that looks slick, juggles its tone shifts well, and is unabashedly fun when the feet and bullets are flying. Special Id’s plot of gangsters, cops, and action romcom probably won’t stick with you, but what will be remembered is a scuffier-than-usual all-ham-&-fists Donnie Yen pounding goons into oblivion. Whenever action starts, the screen crackles with energy, and the Donnie-choreographed fights are blistering bloody-knuckle explosions of tumbling grapples, lightning-fast kicks, whirling fist flurries, and bodyslam brutality. 

  As great as Donnie is in this, it’s Jing Tian that you’ll truly remember, because holy shit, Jing is a revelation. Just radiates that…

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  Review by Sam Morrison ★★★½

  Donnie Yen knocks some noggins loose once again, looking absolutely stylish while doing it. This convinces me he'll be perfect for the Sleeping Dogs movie adaptation.

  A thuggish undercover cop, he's fearless when faced with the seedy crime world, but smiles at the end of the day, wearing his heart of gold on his sleeve. He's a mommas boy and while their relationship wasn't especially deep, I always love the family angle being displayed.

  As expected from this legend, our action is flawlessly displayed, visceral but also playful when stakes aren't as high. It should also be praised that it's filmed squeaky clean. Nothing is out of frame ever, and the colors look sanitized in the best way possible.

  Where…

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  Review by maskull ★★★

  Woovember 4: The Crackdown: Watch action films from 5 different countries (China)

  To be honest, I wasn't really enjoying this for most of the runtime. Sure, there were a couple of decent fights and stunts, but not enough to overcome the endlessly tired cliches of every other undercover cop film ever made. I was getting a wee bit bored. But then there was this car chase/fight scene, in a way that I don't think I've ever quite seen before, and I was totally on board! It was exhilarating! The final fight was really great too. Maybe not as flashy as one might expect, but it felt a little more interesting because of that. Basically any scene with Donnie Yen, Andy…

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  Review by Invincible Asia ★★★½

  Well the mixed and not that positive reviews for "Special ID" are kinda right, but also kinda wrong.
  While this undercover cop story, that sees Donnie Yen finally return to contemporary action cinema and utilise Kung Fu spiced up with a shitload of great groundwork, grappling, brazilian Jiu Jitsu and all that MMA, suffers from an inconsistent tone and doesn't have as much action as I was hoping for it's still pretty amazing a lot of the time.

  It's sometimes a mildly gritty cop thriller with some comedic moments that are okay per se but not good either. The semi-romance with Jing Tian is tolerable and only got cringeworthy during the epilogue. And that was Donnie's fault. Godamnit which director…

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  Review by Voltron 2005 ★★★½

  What a great action flick with crazy fight scenes. The plot is average but this movie is all about action. Very entertaining. Definitely worth watching

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  Review by Matt Lavender ★★★ 6

  I always get this title confused with Initial D which I think is actually some car anime or something. Anyway it's not that, it's more beat downs in the style of Donnie Yen.
  Surprise surprise, there's a Triad turf war going on. Represented by a Mahjong game where some poor fools are force fed Mahjong tiles. I have no idea how Mahjong works but I'm pretty sure you don't eat the tiles.
  Anyway this has fuck all to do with Mahjong. Donnie Yen is an undercover cop and kicks the shit out of some Triad dues. His partner or handler or whatever reckons he's getting too involved with the Triad side of life. Then there's a cool mum birthday party…

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  Review by Ed Küpfer ★★★ 2

  I forgot how good the fights are in this. They are really good.

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  Review by PenguinBoss ★★★½

  Fun action junk food slightly elevated from stylization by my boy director Clarence Fok. Outside of the lame love story it moves pretty well and all of the action is great, with the car chase in particular being a real standout.

  I just watched and reviewed the other Yen vehicle SPL and in that review all I did was bitch about modern Asian movie scores. Case in point: this movie has a completely different tone, different style of director and came out 8 years later but is scored EXACTLY the same. I watched Infernal Affairs for the first time earlier this week. Great movie, totally see why it’s a classic but…that score sucked too and was exactly the same. It is truly amazing how it’s just an unavoidable part of any post millennial Asian movie, I’ll never wrap my head around it. Will try to move on from this in future reviews but good god, it’s just unacceptable.

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  Review by Ryan Francis ★★★ 7

  Freakin' awesome action, thanks to Donnie Yen (who, two years later, I still can't believe I got to shake his hand and get his autograph on my father's own artwork of him, which was made specifically for the New York Asian Film Festival in 2012) - mixed into an otherwise disappointingly mediocre and overall generic film. Still worth checking out, for the action scenes if nothing else.