Taking a break from the international family movies of recent years, Jackie Chan stars in a much grittier outing. Mike Leeder presents the first review...

The mean streets of Tokyo’s notorious Shinjuku district are awash with crime, as various gangs fight for control of the area and the activities within. But, amongst the Japanese fighting for control of the area, are a large number of Chinese gangs and, into this nightmarish, neon-lit location comes Jackie Chan in his darkest role to date. Described by Jackie Chan himself as ‘maybe one percent action, heavy drama!’ the film’s subject matter has already seen it refused a screening permit in China. Impact’s Eastern editor Mike Leeder delivers the first UK review.

The numerous Chinese migrant communities in Tokyo live a shadowy existence on the outskirts of Japanese society. They are not officially acknowledged or welcomed - shunned by the mainstream, threatened and exploited by the Yakuza and living their lives in constant fear of being arrested and repatriated. It’s not exactly the world that Steelhead (Jackie Chan), a hardworking tractor repairman from Northern China was expecting to find here. Steelhead had taken a perilous and costly journey to Tokyo, in hope of finding his girlfriend Xiu Xiu (Xu Jing-lai) who had arrived in the city some time before, only to vanish.

As he struggles to survive in the dark underbelly...

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Action? There will be, bub... Marvel Comics’ most famous mutant gets a prequel solo outing. But is the film the best there is at what it does, or will that infamous internet leak prove to damage the adamantium?

He’s been a beserker, a soldier, a samurai, a farmer, a teacher, a secret agent and a superhero. Jack Bauer meets Clint Eastwood meets Russell Crowe in the sort of unfriendly neigbourhood Spider-man wouldn‘t be caught dead in. In short (and he was always supposed to be 5ft something, rather than 6ft+) Wolverine aka ‘Logan’ was a character rich with potential and in the hands of Wein, Chris Claremont, Frank Miller and Joss Whedon, various traits and corners of his psyche have been uncovered and toyed with.

So the question really isn’t why the character is so popular, it’s why it took so long to become a mainstream success story? Part of that mainstream cinematic appeal must go to Hugh Jackman who took over the role from Dougray Scott when the latter was forced to pull out of the first X-Men movie due to schedule conflicts with Mission Impossible II.

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Of Rocks and Mountains: It’s a case of ‘Every Witch way but loose...’ as the ex-wrestler adds another hit to his acting resume. Does this family-friendly reworking of an old Disney classic measure up?

If every wrestling star who tried to switch their career track and body-slam into Hollywood did so successfully, then the box-office would need a referee not a ticket-collector. But the actual success-rate is much less. Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper had their stabs in the eighties and current bad-boy John Cena hopes to make audiences see him in 12 Rounds out this summer, but if you had to pick a wrestler who might not have been the obvious choice to achieve success it was The Rock, aka Dwayne Johnson. Johnson knew how to rock an audience but many thought his cinematic outings might be confined to traditional ‘heavies’, cameos and straight to DVD outings as had been the template of his predecessors. ‘Many’ would have been wrong. What became apparent very quickly was that Johnson was nobody’s fool and with some solid appearances, a good attitude and a healthy work ethic, he started garnering a genuine fan-base amongst audiences and critics alike. And name one other action star, even including the great Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s had the breadth or savvy to play roles as diverse as action hero, Star Trek alien, gay bouncer, Tooth Fairy, spy and extra-terrestrially abducted cab...

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After the success of Pitch Black, Vin Diesel became a rising action star and despite the mis-firing sequel and Babylon AD, he’s back on form with a new F&F...

In 1974, seven-year-old Mark Vincent and his twin brother Paul thought it would be a good idea to break into the local theatre in New York city’s Greenwich Village. The would-be vandals were caught by the theatre’s artistic director, who made them a deal - she wouldn’t call the cops if the boys agreed to try out for the play. Mark made his stage debut in the resulting production of Dinosaur Door, beginning what would become a lifelong love affair with writing and acting.

Mark never knew his real father. His mother, Delora, was a psychiatrist with an interest in astrology, and his stepfather, Irving, taught acting and encouraged Mark to follow his heart. He studied screenwriting in college and honed muscles and an attitude as a bouncer for extra cash. When his friends nicknamed him ‘Diesel’ because of his boundless energy, he took the first three letters of his surname to create a tried-and-true Hollywood moniker.

Vin Diesel’s first film was Multi-Facial, a 20-minute short that he wrote, produced, and directed over the course of three days (and for only $3,000) in New York in 1994. It begins with Vin reciting a monologue as an Italian tough guy for a couple...

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How do you film a sequel when you effectively killed your leading man the first time around? The answer’s on the poster: ‘he got better!’ Jason Statham Cranks it up again in a strictly for-adults, OTT action style.

When a film announces that, not only is it for adult audiences only, but that its restrictive ratings comes courtesy of ‘...frenetic strong, bloody violence throughout, crude and graphic sexual content, nudity and pervasive language’ then you know that it isn’t going to be a Disney production. It might be less of a surprise to find out that the frenetic film in question stars Jason Statham as he races about at top speed trying to prevent his imminent death. Yes, Crank has cranked out a sequel and Crank 2: High Voltage should keep pulses and hearts (artificial or not) racing.

In the original 2006 movie, hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) spent twenty-four hours doing everything he could to keep his pulse impulsive and trying NOT to succumb to a deadly poison injected into his body. Now it turns out he survived that bad day only to face another... the kind that would give Jack Bauer and John McClane the cold sweats.

We pick up right where we left off, with Chev miraculously surviving almost certain death in a plunge towards the LA sidewalk from a helicopter. He’s kidnapped by a mysterious Chinese mobster and wakes up three months later to find that...

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He’s the only actor to have faced down a Terminator, an Alien and a Predator. Owen Williams meets the unapologetic Lance Henriksen - one of the action industry’s true veterans.

Perhaps still best beloved as the android Bishop in two Aliens movies, Lance Henriksen remains the only actor in history to have been killed by an Alien, a Predator and a Terminator. And Jean-Claude Van-Damme. Still going strong at 68 (even if recent projects have been a bit below the mainstream radar - Hellraiser 8, anyone?) his throaty growl remains immediately and thrillingly distinctive. Owen Williams spoke with the veteran actor - who could still teach these new whipper-snapper action stars a thing or two about longevity - and noted his words of wisdom about life, career, urban legends and making an ass of himself...

Lance on seemingly never turning anything down... If I’m not working, what am I? I’m nuthin’! I have to keep moving. I love working with new people and trying new stuff. I’m always looking for roles I haven’t played before or things I can do something with. Some projects I do because I genuinely think they have something, and some are the ones I just call my ‘alimony films’, but nothing’s ever wasted. I do turn some things down. I won’t play a paedophile. I have a seven year old daughter so I won’t...

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What do you do when the work isn’t coming to you? If you’re a talented team of westerners in Thailand, you create the work yourself. Mike Leeder explores behind-the-scenes on the ambitious Bangkok Adrenaline.

One of the most frequent complaints from a lot of actors and film-makers is often about the lack of consistent work and kind of projects they are being offered. And, while many people seem more than content with complaining about the lack of work, and waiting for the opportunity, a group of Western actors and film-makers based in Thailand got tired of waiting and decided to create their own opportunities by putting together their own fast-paced action comedy project, Bangkok Adrenaline. The film is set to hit cinemas in Thailand this summer with an international release to hopefully follow soon. Mike Leeder takes a first look at the project.

Literally no sooner have they stepped off the plane into the exotic excitement of Thailand, a group of Western backpackers find themselves as unknowing players in a high stakes card game they have no way of winning. Now owing a group of local bad-ass gangsters a cool million baht they don’t have, their dream vacation has begun to turn into a nightmare. In a desperate attempt to to save themselves, they concoct a cunning (if not very well thought out) plan to kidnap a beautiful heiress with the intention of holding her...

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Your mother is an acclaimed teacher of the martial arts. Your brother is one of the great action stars of his generation. Was there any real doubt that Chris Yen would follow in their footsteps? Impact meets a ‘sister streetfighter’ who’s doing it for herself.

Growing up in a household where her mother is world famous martial arts teacher Bow Sim Mark, and her brother Donnie is a world famous martial arts movie star, is it any wonder that both martial arts and movie making features heavily in Chris Yen’s life? Her credits include her debut in Yuen Woo-ping’s Close Encounters of the Vampire and a scene stealing turn in Protégé de la Rose Noire, and Kenn Scott’s fantasy actioner Adventures of Johnny Tao. Yen returns to the screen in the stylized thriller Give ‘em hell, Malone directed by Russsell Mulcahy alongside Thomas Jane and Ving Rhames. Impact’s Eastern editor Mike Leeder caught up with Chris for the following interview.

Impact: Chris, the last time we saw you, you were stylishly kicking butt as a warrior with a mission in The Adventures of Johnny Tao. What else have you been working on since we last spoke?
Chris Yen: Hi, Mike. I was in an indie film called A Good Day To Be Black & Sexy, which went to Sundance then had limited theatrical release, and now it’s on DVD. There’s also a 20 episode WB project I worked on with Josh Schwartz (Chuck) called Rockville, CA....

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British movies used to be all stiff-upper-lip or gritty social realism. Can this Edinburgh-shot, latest actioner from Richard Jobson give homegrown action a shot in the arm?

In Hong Kong an actor might be expected to scale down the side of an 80ft building, but in a British film, surely not! But clambering down the gothic façade of an Edinburgh office block, taking care not to slip, is James Anthony Pearson (Control) the star of New Town Killers. Aren’t British thesps supposed to lounge in the warm of their studio green room while stuntmen trouble themselves with such tasks? Aren’t British actors meant to deliver pages of dialogue, punctuated by pregnant pauses? So why is Pearson too out of breath to speak, and in too much of a hurry to ponder: desperate to get his boots back on solid ground, to leg it down cobbled streets? Because this is no ordinary British film, that’s why. A deadly game of cat and mouse played out on the streets of Edinburgh... An action movie where the villains are bankers. New Town Killers is a very timely, very rare kind of British genre film. Pat Coogan braved the Scottish night to visit the location of director Richard Jobson’s latest.

“I think ‘genre’ is only a dirty word here in the UK, where people don’t understand it”, explains writer-director Richard Jobson on...

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Hellboy, a Hobbit and habitual grave-robbing? Impact pushes back the clock for this mist-enshrouded period horror...

A new and welcome addition to this macabre genre, which includes classics like Frankenstein, in its various renditions, and Robert Wise’s The Body Snatcher (1945), I Sell The Dead is an appealing comedy horror by first-time feature director Glenn McQuaid. As yet unreleased in the UK, this fog-drenched period piece stars Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Dominic Monaghan (Lord Of The Rings, Lost), and Angus Scrimm (Phantasm). It is an enjoyable jaunt through spooky graveyards and bizarre happenings in the company of odd characters, all told with a fiendishly dark humour.

Facing the guillotine for his crimes, grave robber Arthur Blake (Monaghan) reflects on his dubious past at the behest of Father Duffy (Perlman) in a series of flashbacks involving his inept partner Willie Grimes, played by scene stealing Larry Fessenden. Through our unlikely heroes’ escapades, we discover that grave robbing is not all it’s cracked up to be; it can be a very hazardous occupation, and a competitive one at that. The movie tagline is “Never trust a corpse”, but our fumbling duo would also do well to be wary of those not yet six foot under.

Neither an outright homage to Hammer Horror, nor a parody of an Amicus Production, I Sell...

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Our regular anime round-up takes in the delights of the Ergo Proxy box set.

Produced by Manglobe and directed by Shuko Murase from a screenplay by Dai Sato, Ergo Proxy is a dystopian sci-fi series that borrows heavily from such heavyweight classics as Logan’s Run, Bladerunner and I Robot. It was broadcast in 2007 on Japan’s WOWOW network before making the jump to DVD in the UK in August of the same year, courtesy of MVM. Now, following the successful conclusion of the series, MVM have collected all the episodes in slimline cases and bound them together in a wonderful box-set for anyone with 573 minutes of their life spare to dedicate to sublime sci-fi.

The series begins in the domed city of Romdo; one of many such city-states which serve to house the Earth’s surviving population following a global ecological disaster, overseen by Regent Donov Meyer and a council of Artificial Intelligences who manifest themselves as giant neo-classical statues named after distinguished philosophers. To aid their management of human affairs, the majority of the populace are taken care of by an android auto-rev, a sentient machine that leads them through life, making decisions on their behalf - to such an extent that most humans are content to do nothing but consume. This heavily governed...

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Our regular anime round-up enters the realm of the Beast King with Jyu-oh-sei.

New from Manga Entertainment this month is Jyu-oh-sei: Planet of the Beast King, an eleven part series collected in a double disc pack. Originally a manga created by Natsumi Itsuki, it was subsequently adapted by the BONES studio for Fuji TV and is also set to air in the US on Funimation this month.

Jyu-oh-sei: Planet of the Beast King is set far in mankind’s future when we have left a dying Earth and colonised several planets in the Balkan star system. Thor and Rai are twelve year old twins living a life of privilege on the Juno space colony. Their lives are shattered when they return home to find their scientist parents murdered and are then gassed by the perpetrators - just as he loses consciousness, Thor, the senior twin, sees that their attackers are government special forces. The two have no time for questions however, as they are bound in a space capsule and fired toward Chimera, a prison planet that doesn’t appear on any official space chart and is home to the worst convicts the colonies have. Chimera has an eccentric orbit that means its day is 100 Earth days long, while the equally interminable night sees temperatures...

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Andrez casts his eye over the brilliant Michiko & Hatchin.

In this exciting, thematically jump-cut installment of Japanime, Impact’s freewheeling Japan-based stringer, Andrez Bergen, sucks in his tummy as he dresses down for a traditional onsen in a not-so-classical locale (think the hot springs theme park variety). He has his feet masticated on by cloying little fish in 40oC water, at the very same time that he learns that famed anime studio Studio 4oC (Tekkonkinkreet) is merging with new player Lucent Pictures Entertainment, Inc. - founded by Eiichi Kamagata, the producer of Gurren Lagann.

Andrez then goes off in search of Spock in downtown (and uptown) Tokyo, in the English conversation schools, music studios, clubs, and the animation houses of Japan. But first, he indulges in Manglobe Inc.’s flashy new anime show, Michiko & Hatchin, which is set in a Brazil you’ve never seen before... whew.

MICHIKO & HATCHIN
MAIN STORY: If Fuji TV wanted to kick off their 50th year on air with a sizeable bang, they certainly picked the spot-on anime series to do so: Michiko & Hatchin sizzled when it first hit screens back in October, and it’s continued to be a solid ratings-puller and critical smash for the terrestrial station that also airs Japan’s longest-running anime series, Sazae-san....

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Andrez notes that though Star Trek has been trekkin’ across the universe, it will still take a little effort to be known out East...

It’s official: One in seven citizens of Japan have heard of Star Trek. I know this, because I have just finished personally quizzing 60-odd people, and these are the stats I conjured up from those loose discussions. The margin of error is open to contention, since I only interviewed people in Tokyo, my test subjects were limited to students of English, techno DJs/musicians, or creative anime types, and the age group stretched from 18 to 72.

It isn’t as if Japanese television consumption has been limited to only jidaigeki samurai dramas, or home-grown animated sci-fi romps like Mobile Suit Gundam. Most of the 35 to 45 age-bracket grew up on Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s futurist marionette romp, Thunderbirds, in the 1970s. When I arrived in this country eight years ago, Thunderbirds was on NHK in primetime. The week I sneaked through Customs, it was the episode ‘Cry Wolf’, set in Australia. I had to explain to my Japanese hosts precisely why someone fresh off the boat from Melbourne didn’t sound like the outback butchers of pronunciation Thunderbirds had portrayed.

Given that Star Wars is based in large part on classic Japanese movie (The Hidden Fortress) it should be no wonder that the...

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As a prelude to next month’s coverage of the sci-fi franchise juggernaut, John Bierly asks what we really want from the rebooted, tret-conned return of Kirk, Spock and company...

In 1987, the novelty song Star Trekkin’ warp-sped to the top of the UK Singles Chart. “Star Trekkin’ across the universe,” it begins. “Only going forward ‘cause we can’t find reverse.” But, for a franchise that’s always prided itself on going boldly where no one has gone before, the new film beaming into cinemas this May is taking a bold step back. Or maybe sideways. With details of its intricate plot still tightly under wraps, it’s difficult to predict what exactly to expect.

Producer/director J.J. Abrams wouldn’t have it any other way. The man who created genre television mainstays Alias, Lost and Fringe also made one of the finest and most underrated action films of the last few years: Mission: Impossible III. While each of its predecessors was pretentious in its own way, Abrams came in and delivered action-packed thrills by making Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt a real human being whose team felt like a real, functioning family.

Leonard Nimoy plays Mr. Spock. But so does Heroes villain Zachary Quinto. Apparently the Romulan villain Nero (Eric Bana) tries to go back in time to erase the greatest threat to evil that the galaxy has ever known - Captain James Tiberius Kirk....

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From Con Air to Ghost Rider, Nic Cage has appeared in a variety of mainstream roles, but as he looks for projects of a less-violent nature, did the recent release of sci-fi thriller Knowing provide any answers to his quest?

It takes Nicolas Cage, the man with the most often-misspelled first name in Hollywood, a little while to get going. He’s a man who thinks carefully about each and every answer, talking slowly and deeply and with that famous furrowed brow. But get him past the mundane, everyday questions and he soon warms up, the voice rises and the words come quicker and with more of a smile.

He’s in London to promote Knowing, a sci-fi thriller in which a time capsule is buried at a school in the late ‘50s and then is opened, decades later, to reveal, amongst its contents, a paper with a series of (what appear to be random) numbers listed on both sides. Science teacher John Koestler (Cage), a single parent after the tragic loss of his wife in a hotel fire, gets quietly drunk one night and starts to see a pattern in the numbers. Soon he believes what the list represents is a catalogue of tragedies and disasters through the years since it was buried. But how could the little girl who originally wrote it have knowledge of the disasters still to come... and if this list is true, what about the tragedies listed...

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Once Upon a Time... Calum Waddell talks to Yum Pil-Sung and guides us through a particularly freaky fairytale!

A few issues ago Impact alerted you to the genius of Hansel and Gretel - the best slice of Oriental shock since, well, the heady days of such J-horror classics as Dark Water and Premonition. Receiving a very limited theatrical run back in January, the movie is finally available on DVD courtesy of Terracotta Distribution and, rest assured, you would have to be a mug to let this one pass you by.

Colourful, creepy and kooky - this epic fear flick is helmed by Yim Pil-Sung, the maestro who reached worldwide acclaim with 2005’s icy thriller Antarctic Journal. For those unaware, Hansel and Gretel introduces us to a helpless twenty-something professional trapped in a waking hell after his car spins off the road due to some wintry weather. Once awoken, our man stumbles through some woodland and ends up in a forest mansion lorded over by three seemingly innocuous youngsters - aged from adolescent to early teens. However, nothing is quite as it seems and he soon finds himself unable to return to normality (the trail back to the motorway consistently leads in a circle to nowhere) and, even worse, the threat of certain death looms over him less he bring...

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Impact begins a look at the TV shows that you may have missed but deserve to be sought out. As Battlestar Galactica finishes, we examine why it proved to be one of the most important SF outings of recent memory...

We’re starting with Battlestar Galactica for two reasons. The first is that it’s fresh in the memory. The very final episode of the sci-fi show went out in late March in the US and in the UK less than a week later. The second is, well, because it was very, very good which is quite impressive for a show that most people thought would be very, very bad. (If you’re old enough to remember the original show of the late ‘70s there are a few words that still make you shudder: Galactica 1980 and Space Scouts).

But Ron Moore created the first modern BSG mini-series for the Sci-Fi channel in the hope of recapturing a premise and making it more relevant to our times. This wouldn’t be a hokey adventure television show, nor would it have the altruistic glow of some Trek outings. After all, Moore mused, wasn’t this a concept that was ALL about warfare and genocide? About how humans had mistreated their robot servants for decades and then those self-same creations rose up and almost succeeded in wiping them out completely? The potential for solid drama was obvious, but fans were wary. Moore came from that self-same Trek background...

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With Beau Smith scripting his own action outings to deadline, John Mosby steps into the breach for this issue to ask about the long-game being played out (or not) in modern Marvel Comics...

Nostalgebra: the art of creating a formula from which you can make money from the good old days. Before you argue that it isn’t a real world... it is now.

The legendary Steve Ditko recently launched a wordy if somewhat incomprehensible attack on the state of modern comics, in particular pointing out his annoyance and frustration at the way Marvel head honcho Joe Quesada has talked about constructing stories for Marvel by metaphorically, but regularly breaking the toys in the sandbox and putting them back together again to tell stories. Many struggled with the scattershot way in which those criticisms were written, but there’s probably quite a few people out there who might agree that there’s a major problem in modern comics in catering for your existing audience and enticing a new one. How much can you break something if you aren’t agreed whether it even needs to be fixed?

I mentioned that very point in my critique of Marvel’s One More Day/Brand New Day at the start of 2008. This was the story that got rid of Peter Parker’s marriage and the public’s knowledge of who was under the mask. The former had existed for over twenty years in real-time, the...

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