New York Cop
(1994)
Director: Toru
Murakawa
Cast: Toru Nakamura, Chad Mcqueen, Mira Sorvino
New York Cop. Say that out loud a few
times. New
York Cop, New York Cop. Sounds kind of bland or generic,
doesn't
it? In fact, the movie itself suffers both from blandness and elements
much familiar to viewers. I suppose that if you were in a pinch, and
you
had nothing better to do, the Japanese-made New York Cop might
help to pass the time for 88 minutes or so. But I doubt that you would
find yourself in that position with the average video store stocking
hundreds
of other movies.
The opening credits claim that this is based on a true
story ("New York
Undercover Cop", by Jiro Ueno). I very much suspect that most, if not
all,
what happens in this movie didn't actually take place. Take the opening
scene, where Toshi (Nakamura) is sitting in a subway station. A young
black
man (carrying a portable stereo on his shoulder and struttin' along)
walks
up to Toshi and in an overdone black accent says, "Hey f**k, got any
money?"
A few minutes later, the black man mugs someone, and Toshi runs after
him
in hot pursuit, shooting him. Then in the very next scene,
Toshi
is at the police station with some higher-ups. Is he being reviewed for
the shooting, which is standard for all cops whenever they fire a gun?
No, the first thing they say is, "We need you to go undercover. You're
Japanese! They'll never suspect we're using a Japanese as an undercover
agent." What the...? What about the shooting? Go undercover where? Go
undercover
with who? Is Toshi from Japan, or is Japanese-American? None of these
questions
are answered at this point. Oh, some do get answered eventually, but by
then more questions like these have popped up.
I'd have to say Toshi is Japanese, or else he had a very
sheltered childhood
living up in America. That's mainly due to the fact that actor Toru
Nakamura
just can't pronounce English well. Not only is it hard to understand
what
he's saying sometimes, the fact that he's struggling to get his accent
right means he has no time to put any emotion into his performance. He
tries to put in a little zip for his character with a few martial arts
sequences, which are believable though not exciting in a Jackie Chan
fashion.
Overall, though, he just struggles with his accent and going through
the
physical motions of American action stars.
After the discussion previously stated, a fellow cop
(who's Jamaican)
goes up to Toshi and says, "Hey hey hey...you looked troubled, mon!
Wanna
go to a sushi bar?" This is yet another example of the racism that
frequently
appears in Japanese movies. Although the Japanese have (rightly so)
protested
racism against the Japanese in American films, they also need to take a
deep look at the portrayal of certain ethnic groups in their own
movies.
Also, New York Cop not only suffers from racism, but of
general
stereotypes. For example, an encounter with a biker gang portrays all
the
members of the gang as people who just blurt out insults and racist
remarks.
Granted, bikers are pretty predictable in their behavior, but did the
filmmakers
have to choose the easiest way to portray them?
Eventually, Toshi finds someone that looks suspicious
enough to choose
to go undercover at. That's how it pretty much comes across, since
there
isn't much explanation about who or what Toshi is investigating. The
gang
he joins up with is run by Hawk, played by McQueen who isn't bad under
the circumstances. As Hawk and Toshi become more trusting of each
other,
their (professional) relationship infuriates Hawk's assistant Tito, who
keeps blurting throughout the movie "I don't trust that guy! Etc."
These
statements are spread out between endless scenes of Toshi contacting
his
police superiors secretly and the occasional "action" scene, the "best"
one being a car/motorcycle chase with the drivers speeding at about 30
m.p.h. . Eventually, Toshi's cover is blown, leading to feelings
between
Toshi and Hawk (no, you perverts, not those kind of feelings)
that
make absolutely no sense. My guess is that director Toru Murakawa was
trying
to make a kind of gangster relationship a la John Woo, but ends up just
being silly.
Oh yes, there's future Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino in a
supporting role.
She plays the role of Hawk's sister Maria, who picks up and saves Toshi
from a band of stereotyped Hispanic muggers, despite the fact that it
would
be insane to imagine a single woman in New York City letting into her
car
a total stranger. The purpose of her role seems to be (1) to introduce
Toshi to Hawk, and (2) to let there be inserted a totally gratuitous
sex
scene with the hero. Hey, fair's fair - there have been countless films
where a Caucasian hero gets it on with an Asian woman, so why not have
it the other way around for a change? So they are in love, but she is
put
aside until the end, where she is quite willing to continue the
relationship
but...he doesn't. Why? I suppose it's because a lot of other action
movies
have the loner hero continuing on with his work with no room for a
relationship.
But it doesn't make any sense here, for Toshi previously seemed too
interested
in her to stop everything. They took all the clichés from action
movies, but the filmmakers didn't know how to put them together - or
even
how to pull them off well. This movie goes to show that foreigners can
make movies just as bad as Americans. Considering that we are
supposedly
"privileged" to have the bad foreign movies filtered out before foreign
films come to North America, a film like New York Cop can't
help but make me wonder just how bad the worst foreign films get.
UPDATE: Michael Prymula sent this in:
"In this film you were wondering about why the film
seems to jump ahead so abruptly, well on IMDB the US version is listed
as the cut version, whereas the Japanese one clocks in at 93 minutes,
meaning a whole 5 minutes were trimmed for the US release, and I'm
pretty sure important continuity related material was most likely cut
from the film."
Check
for availability on Amazon (DVD)
See also: Keaton's Cop, Stoner, One Man Jury
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