I’m a big fan of Donnie Yen, he’s one of Asia’s best and brightest actors, and has been for decades. In Special ID, Donnie plays an undercover cop embedded deep within one of China’s gangs. He’s highly ranked and respected in this underworld as Dragon Chen. Chen does his undercover work with great skill, having successfully blended in for years now, although he looks forward to the day when he can become a standard cop again, and even threatens to quit his role as he feels his days surviving undercover are becoming numbered. He decides to stay on at the urging of his boss, in hopes of getting damning evidence against the gang’s overlord, Cheung Mo-Hung, played by Collin Chou. When he’s not hanging around the thugs of the underground, Chen often calls his mother, whom he has a great friendship with. She believes in Chen, but also worries for his safety, and he for hers. Their conversations on the phone provide a great balance and frame of reference to Chen’s ‘double life.’
Special ID has drama, and action, but it also inherently has some significant suspense elements to it as well. Not the suspense you see in horror movies, but Chen, being undercover in a gang, is often completely surrounded by people that would not hesitate to kill him if he were found out to be a cop. So there are several scenes whereby, as the viewer, you’re put on edge a little bit in hopes that Chen doesn’t get discovered. Simultaneously, you know that at some point, in the flow of the plot, he’s going to be found out, but you just don’t know when, or what the immediate consequences will be.
Anyway, while Donnie has the lead role, Tian Jing does a great job as Fang Jing, an attractive and skilled policewoman who is paired up with Chen in order to takedown the growing syndicate. A capable actor, both in dramatic and action scenes, Jing’s character adds structure and breadth to the movie that otherwise might be too centric on Chen and his friend-turned-rival Sunny, played by Andy On. The dynamics between Chen and Sunny are great, especially in the scene where their tenuous friendship ends in the restaurant action scene.
Speaking of action, which Special ID has plenty of, the fight choreography is excellent. Chen’s use of jiu-jitsu tactics for throws and joint locks is likely to be met with push-back from some fans as the grappling and ground-fighting found in Special ID isn’t typical Donnie Yen. So if you’re looking for really fast, beautiful fighting like in Ip Man, you won’t find it in here, but that’s certainly not to say the fighting in Special ID isn’t of great quality. In fact, I would argue, that it’s more realistic and fitting for the story and atmosphere of this particular movie than “traditional” martial arts would be.
This Blu-ray release comes from Well Go USA, and the presentation quality is stellar. Some of the most amazing scenes are of the city and skyline at night, which dazzles with a colorful array of lights. I was continually impressed with the visual fidelity and technical quality of the image and noted no flaws; it’s pristine. Audio tracks include the original 5.1 Mandarin and dubbed English, I used the Mandarin track with English subtitles. The audio quality compliments the video quality very well. As for special features, there isn’t much, unfortunately. You have the trailer in HD and a all-to-brief ‘making of’ feature. The making of feature is in HD and runs about six minutes, with Donnie Yen prepping each segment which covers fighting and the car chase sequence at the end of the film. You get to see some cool production footage that shows in some detail how they pulled off these impressive stunts.
And with that, let’s get to the summary…
