the initial d hotness.

caught the movie on 23 june, thursday. (i insisted there was to be no other day)
with a whole lot of people chin/jane/szeman/homo/leeloo/eleanor.
i didn't expect the turnout though i would have gone without them anyway.

much as i luurrve jielun, i wasn't particularly impressed with the movie.
and it wasn't that i had high expectations for the movie, just that some aspects of it didn't work for me.

the best parts were the racing scenes, though i thought the amount of freeze frames could be reduced drastically. it made the flow rather disjointed.

the mandarin dub bothered me a lot. i hate anne suzuki's dub, she sounds like she's 25 or something. same goes for edison and shawn yue.

i don't know why but the movie's pacing seemed rather slow at times, which i found hard to concentrate when i was already very worn out from work.

and the movie failed in the emotional aspects of the show.
the romantic love between takumi and mogi was shallow, the friendship between itsuki and takumi rather weak and the fatherly love of bunta forced.
i expected more from alan mak, who wrote such a great plotline for infernal affairs. he probably failed whereas andrew lau revived the movie with the andrenaline-pumping scenes. (even though the whole world knew takumi would win, duh)

the soundtrack comprised of very laid-back music, which is nice to suit takumi but definitely not apt for a number of exciting scenes. the movie's main theme "drifting" (written by dearie jielun) wasn't even played much until the ending credits. bah. that song suited the racing moments best! though i love it when "yi lu xiang bei" was played during the takumi-mogi moments. so sweeet~
jielun's reactions to the kiss, cheesecake, sexy swimsuit were hilarious. more hilarious than chapman to's spastic humour.

ok let's move on to the most talked about, jielun's acting.
erm, let's be fair here. (i'm trying my best to be a diplomatic jay fan)
i thought jielun's acting was just amateurish and given this being his debut, it is ok. nothing great like i heard from all the previews, cast and crew comments.
i thought that jielun was being himself entirely in the show, which doesn't count as acting. maybe because the character takumi is so much alike to jielun himself?
his crying scene wasn't very effective for me. (sorry but i even giggled because i thought he was so cute) i attribute that to the lack of chemistry between the 2 leads because not enough time was given to build up the relationship.

but his lead appearance did do some good for jielun.
for once my friends actually told me they think jielun is cute. (LOL)
and chin even said jielun seems to be cuter than edison!? (LMAO)
i'd say jielun is charasmatic, not cute lah. he's cute when he grins though.
for now, i'd say a movie's not the best place to see jielun in. go for the concert instead. you'd be more than wowed, honestly.

so for me the movie wasn't entirely great and deserving of the big hoo-ha.
i'd give it ***1/2 (out of 5).
but i still want to watch it again. the movie just grows on you.