What happens when a popular Japanese manga gets turned into an anime TV series and becomes so popular around Asia that it gets filmed as a Chinese live-action feature film? Initial D happens, that's what!

Takumi, an 18-year-old garage attendant, doesn't realise how fast he is on four wheels. His dad's been coaching him to be a fast delivery boy, teaching him special driving techniques such as 'drifting' the car around curving mountain roads. Almost by accident, Takumi beats a member of a local road-racing team, the Speed Stars, and joins them as their fastest member. Word soon gets around, and other gangs want to prove that Takumi may be good, but he's not the fastest in the area.

I'm surprised that no one in Japan wanted to make this movie. They may just be happy with getting Initial D anime on TV, video, and even as an animated feature film (Initial D: Third Stage). But how can you go wrong with teenagers, fast cars, and night racing on perilous mountain roads? Perhaps it's a project that Japanese advocates of road safety wanted to discourage.

Anyway, along came some heavyweight directors from Hong Kong, hot off the success of their Infernal Affairs trilogy (an epic tale of cops versus drug barons), and they shot the story on location in Japan on Mount Akina, where the original comic was set! Although it's not as weighty a subject as their previous films, they ended up with another huge hit on their hands in Asia.

The film is respectful to the Japanese, faithful to the original manga story, yet stars a Chinese cast, mostly recruited from the Infernal Affairs films. It's lightweight, inoffensive, and repetitive. I still enjoyed even never having seen the anime, although I think that anyone not acquainted with Asian cinema may find it lacking sex or spectacle. It's certainly unusual to see a story where tofu plays such an important role!

This film's strength is the driving. Impossibly slick driving. I thought the only way they could drive cars the same way that they do in the anime was to use computer effects. I was wrong – they simply recruited real-life "drift-racers" – drivers who can go 'round twisty mountain roads skidding sideways all the way!

There's a likeable cast, a little gritty drama, some unchallenging characters (but visually quite faithful to the manga), and rather scuzzier behavior than one sees in the average Japanese movie. I felt the best character in Initial D is Takumi's dad, played by the versatile Anthony Wong (star of dozens of great films including Infernal Affairs, The Heroic Trio, and the exceptionally gruesome The Untold Story). He plays an over-the-hill drunk with a secret past.