Hopes were high: directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak made Infernal Affairs. That was one of the slickest Hong Kong films of recent years, a delightful confection of bang and swagger. Initial D is based on the eponymous manga comic by Shuichi Shigeno, also behind Infernal Affairs, and the film has grossed more in Hong Kong than War of the Worlds and Batman Begins combined. But those handing over their HK$ for Initial D may not have been so discerning as those paying for Infernal Affairs, for Initial D is as emotionally simplistic as manga, but lacks the style.

Rather than being about drifting cars or the lives of the drifters, the film is motivated by coining cash from thousands of Asian pop fans, for star Jay Chou (playing Takumi Jay) is a major Asian pop idol, his music makes up most of the soundtrack, and Edison Chan (his only rival for talent, Ryousuke Takahashi) is something of a screen idol from his commercials work.

Initial D borrows some of its shots from The Fast and the Furious, but it has little of that film's brio. The Far Eastern penchant for drifting cars has become something of a global one; the forthcoming third Fast and the Furious film features it heavily. But Initial D has little clue about the art and little interest in it, with repetition of shots and clumsy intercutting of drifting by stunt drivers with at-the-wheel shots of the films stars. The press notes maintain that drifting is the art of cornering without losing speed. Hardly, it is about show and speed, in that order. Takumi Jay is supposed to have honed his drifting by delivering his father's tofu round the snaking, smooth, seductively-lit roads of Mount Akina. But to go as quickly as possible would have meant much less drifting.

Mount Akina is where various road racing teams fight for the fastest time. Jay's only friend is Itsuki Tachibana (played by Chapman To, it comes as no surprise to learn his background is in soaps), the spoilt son of a local garage owner. As Tachibana lacks any sort of talent, Takahashi is the main local contender, although there is a rival gang. Amidst all this Jay emerges as our divinely-gifted but unwilling hero.

Seeing our hero's home life, it's perhaps understandable that he wanted to spend the night zipping round a mountain. His father, Bunta Fujiwara (Hong Kong veteran Anthony Wong), has abandoned anything but drinking. He does manage to find time to give his son a demonstration run around Mount Akina. He is, of course, an ex-drifter who has fallen to seed after the (protecting excuse of) his wife's death and is, of course, still brilliant behind the wheel.

Thus Jay is the fastest round the mountain, but he doesn't seem much impressed by this. Nor does he seem particularly interested in Natsuki Mogi (Anne Suzuki; a model since the age of 3 whose looks outplay her talent). She seems quite captivated by him, crying when he decides their nascent relationship can no longer continue. He's discovered that she's got a sugar daddy.

That revelation is bungled by a car continuity error: they give the sugar daddy two different eras of Mercedes S-class saloon. That forces on you the puzzle of whether there are two of them, or if one might be the father absent from her home. But both are meant to be the same man; she does, however, have the protecting excuse of providing for her mother. The slip shows what a rushed job Initial D is.

There is a local charm and authenticity of a kind, and in its pitching of the Toyota Trueno, an '80s car that has emerged as a drifting classic, against much more obvious machinery such as Takahashi's Mazda RX-7 or the rival gang's Mitsubishi Evo VIII. But the style is derivative, the plotting predictable and the delivery wooden (Chou is Taiwanese; perhaps that accounts for part of the stilted speaking, but he's not the only one). A B-movie by numbers.