The year 2004 represented the peak of the Asia Extreme brand in the UK, in terms of both commercial success and mainstream critical attention. Tartan devoted its energies to a range of Asia Extreme projects, including another multiplex-only touring film festival, several high-profile DVD releases (and re-releases), and its most aggressive marketing campaign yet for two soon-to-be-seminal stand-alone theatrical releases: Oldboy (Park Chanwook, 2003) and Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, 2002).

Building on the already impressive showing in 2003, the high number of Asian films on release in the UK in 2004 included many non-Asia Extreme titles. Released by Artificial Eye, the artistic samurai film Zatoichi, by critically beloved auteur Kitano Takeshi, was drawing audiences in both art-house cinemas and multiplexes. Also attracting audiences was the derivative but popular J-horror film Ju-on: The Grudge (Shimizu Takashi, 2003) and the Thai art film Last Life in the Universe (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, 2003). This ‘Asian Invasion’ even extended to more familiar Western cinema, as a variety of Hollywood films engaged with Japaneseness (with varying degrees of Orientalist fascination); Quentin Tarantino's two Kill Bill films (2003, 2004) were immediately popular, superstar Tom Cruise embodied the Japanese warrior code in The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003) and Sofia Coppola's Tokyo-set Lost in Translation (2003) proved to be an unexpected critical and commercial success.

Tartan, meanwhile, were expanding the Asia Extreme brand to include an even greater variety of cult Asian cinema, incorporating themes and genres that were arguably less and less ‘extreme’. Tartan set their sights on a new, wider audience for Asia Extreme titles while trying to retain their original target market. The release(s) of Infernal Affairs in 2004 were crucial to the expansion of the Asia Extreme brand. Part of a popular trilogy of Hong Kong films that have come to be regarded as ‘transnational blockbusters’, Infernal Affairs was sold and consumed in the UK as a more prestigious example of the familiar Hong Kong police thriller. With a solid marketing campaign and a staggered release timed for maximum exposure, the first Infernal Affairs film was released in mainstream commercial UK cinemas in February, then going on to screen in art-house cinemas nationwide.