REVIEWED - INITIAL D: DRIFT RACER/ TAUMANCHI D: SUCH a hit in Hong Kong last summer that it raked in more box-office revenue than War of the Worlds and Batman Begins combined, Initial D: Drift Racer is based on a manga comic book series. Its hero, Takumi (Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou in an engaging film debut) is an unassuming Japanese teen working for his tofu-maker father, an alcoholic former racing driver whose wife has left him.

Having been sent out on tofu delivery runs since he was 13, Takumi is well used to the miles of hairpin bends along nearby Mount Akina, where he's become an unflappable ace at drifting, negotiating cars around tight corners at maximum speed through controlled skidding. He is less experienced in the twists and turns of romance, and attractive student Natsuki (Anne Suzuki) has to make all the moves when they become sweethearts. As his young life gets more complicated, Takumi finds a release in nocturnal competitive downhill racing on the serpentine Mount Akina roads.

Accompanied by a retro electropop score, the many racing scenes are the raison d'etre of this simplistic, unpretentious entertainment in which a few actors - Anthony Wong as the boozy dad and Chapman To as Takumi's best friend - deliver wildly exaggerated performances.

There are so many races that the viewer becomes intimately familiar with the geography of Mount Akina, and they are filmed with flair by Infernal Affairs co-directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, liberally employing split screen, slow-motion and overhead shots to vary the action. The movie culminates in an extended three-car race, the result of which will not surprise anybody.