Movie	Extras
Audio	Video

This is the Deltamac DVD.

Movie
Now, this is the movie that showed John Woo (‘Fists of the Double K’, here, ‘Face/Off’, here) had real promise.  This is the first movie that had much of his future trademarks in place.  I don’t mean a guy with two guns blazing in slow-mo.  I mean more along the lines of values and character.  In movies before this one, values and beliefs were vague or underdeveloped, but in here they’re right up there and placed for everyone to see.  For example, honour and loyalty are mortal values.  Anybody breaking the honour code dies, it’s as simple as that.  Damian Lau and Chow Yun-Fat in ‘A Better Tomorrow’ (here) are the same.  It’s uncanny.  You can really see what Mr. Woo was going for.  He accomplished it very well.  You care much more about the characters than in his previous movies, like ‘Hand of Death’.

Oddly enough, the movie takes a comedic tone for most of the way.  In any case, the story goes that a guy meets someone whose family was killed during his wedding day and decides to help him out.  In true Hong Kong fashion, the plot gets more and more complicated by the minute, until at the end you don’t really care much about the plot.  What’s good, though, is that in the last 40 minutes, this isn’t much plot, just plot twists.

The movie doesn’t sport the best-choreographed fights scenes in the history of Hong Kong cinema (although you do get some pretty nifty moves throughout these puppies), but it makes up for that by making the fights long.  Now, I don’t mean ‘Matrix: Reloaded’ long, I mean long.  I mean the-last-40-minutes-is-basically-nothing-but-fighting long.  Between the fights you might get one or two minutes of dialogue, but that’s it.

Three guys worked as choreographer, Fung Hak-On, who worked with Jackie Chan (‘Dragon Lord’ and ‘Police Story’), Sammo Hung (assistant action director on ‘Iron Fisted Monk’ and ‘Warriors Two), Tsui Hark (‘Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain’), Huang Ha, who worked on ‘Enter the Fat Dragon’ and a few others, and Alan Chui, who worked with Ching Siu-Tung a few times.  All of these guys, by the way, were veteran actors, who were in many, many Shaw Brothers movies.  These guys knew their stuff and there are a bunch of really nice little gags here and there.  The technicality of the fights is executed with gusto and all the action comes off really well.  I still contend that the fight in the middle between the hero and the other guy is one of the best fights out there.

The biggest difference, I find, between this movie and so many other kung fu movies, is that you like the characters in here.  I mean, you care for them.  In many other movies, I kind of feel they’re there to fight, and their goofiness and likeability is sort of imposed on you.  Most of the time, beyond the training, the characters don’t really have any growth.  The difference between them at the start and finish is their fighting ability.  In here, Mr. Woo just did what he’d do in the future with ‘A Better Tomorrow’ and ‘The Killer’ (here and here); he tells his story while caring about the characters.  He likes these guys and he believes what they say.  In the end, this movie is better than ‘Hand of Death’ because of it.  The plots are unimportant, the action, I find, is better in ‘Hand of Death’ (here), but this movie has more heart, it seems more personal.  It has that extra something that so many kung fu movies lack.

Mr. Woo wouldn’t be recognized in the rest of the world for another 8 years, but what made him famous is clearly in this movie.  I’m so glad I bought this movie.  I was very lucky to tape this movie one night when it played on TV, and I can’t thank Showcase enough.  Until I bought the DVD, it was the only way I could see it, and see it I did.  I found it astounding and I still hold that opinion after… seven…ty… three viewings, or something like that.  Thanks to the nice characters and long fights, it’s something that should be more well-known.  Unfortunately, Damien Lau and Wei Pai were never big name attractions in the US.  Hopefully, some respectful company will seek out this rather unknown gem so more people can see it.  It certainly deserves to be seen.

Trailer
Like most 4 minute, 40 second-long trailers, this shows approximately half the movie.  Fighting is abundant, which shouldn’t be surprising.  The worst thing, though, is that it shows you the climax of the movie.  I was disappointed when ‘Mission: Impossible’ did it, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised it wasn’t the first time it happened.

Audio
Well, this is only in 2.0, but it shouldn’t be surprising.  Anything more would be some sort remixing job.  All the audio needs to get across is the dialogue and the punches, and it does that nicely.  There’s no real kick to anything, but I suppose it’s not really needed.  There are some movies that could use a nice 5.1 track, but this movie isn’t really one of them.  The fight scenes are pretty conventional and the surrounds wouldn’t be used much.

Video
2.35:1 letterbox.  Well, you’ve seen old school kung fu movies on VHS, right?  Okay, so I’ll you right now this DVD doesn’t do much better.  Oh, the picture is clearer and more detailed, and the colours are better, for sure.  There’s no awful streaking or bleeding or blurring, or anything of the sort.  Some nice chap from the UK once copied an old King Hu movie for me and that was way worse than this.  The picture is nice, it’s just not what you’d expect on a DVD.  There are still scratches and specks and the colours shift from time to time.  You get to see what Mr. Woo wanted you to see, and that’s about it.  It’s better than VHS, just not much better.  Ending on a happier note, the movie will suck you in that you won’t really notice the picture quality.

11/8/2004