Chan film too violent for China

Chan too violent for China

Yahoo! news is reporting that kung fu king, Jackie Chan, is starring in a new movie so violent that its director decided not to release it in mainland China, which doesn’t have a film ratings system.

 

Hong Kong director Derek Yee said Monday that he considered toning down the violence in “Shinjuku Incident” so it could pass censorship in China, but decided not to because he thought it would hurt the integrity of the movie. Chan, who invested in the movie, agreed with his decision.


Yee said the $25 million Chinese-language movie, in which Chan plays a refugee who escapes to Japan and becomes a killer for the mob, has scenes that show characters getting a hand chopped off and pierced with knives.

 

“We tried to cut the violent scenes to meet the requirements of the Chinese market, but producers I invited to watch that version thought it was incomplete,”

 

China doesn’t have a ratings system, so every movie is released for all audiences. Chinese censors are also wary of subject matter that is politically sensitive, like Tibet or the military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

 

Yee said he wasn’t worried about the film’s setting of Japan — another sensitive topic in China.

 

“For us, the problem was just the violence”.