Movie	Extras
Audio	Video

This DVD is available from Celestial, and this is the DVD I’m reviewing.  It’s region 3.

Movie
With a title like ‘Vengeance’, take a guess as to what the plot is.  It’s not hard to follow.  Ti Lung gets killed so David Chiang comes to town to kill anybody and everybody that had anything to do with the murder or stands in his way.  That might seem easy enough to do but it somehow seems – and is pointed out by Wong Ping – the population of the bad guys trying to stop Mr. Chiang seemingly equal to the population of the town he rode into.  It’s a great ride.

The movie broke a few Hong Kong movie taboos.  The first is that you can have a male star the audience cares for.  Apart form perhaps Jimmy Wang Yu and Kwan Tak-Hing, all the major movie stars were women.  Now, I don’t want to say director Chang Cheh (‘Shaolin Temple’, ‘The Brave Archer 3’) is misogynistic but if I say that I’ll probably be pelted with dried prunes.  Women in his movies are either useless damsels or girls that create trouble for the stars.  Not surprisingly, after this movie, the only stars were men.  He directed the sequel to ‘Come Drink with Me’, ‘The Golden Swallow’, but reduced Cheng Pei-Pei’s role and pumped up Jimmy Wang Yu’s role.

SPOILERS
The next taboo that Chang Cheh broke with this movie is the death of the main character.  With that, he set the stage for many of his other movies.
END SPOILERS

The end result of these two broken taboos is a powerful and rather testosterone-driven revenge flick.  There is a romance element and it is strong enough.  It’s better done than in, say, ‘Duel of Fists’ (here) or ‘King Eagle’ (here).  There’s genuine attraction to this love story.  The performances are great.  David Chiang gives a great performance as the tough guy.  I don’t care how his smile looks, I don’t want to cross this guy.

The fights are nice to watch.  Tang Chia and Yuen Cheung-Yan handled them and they’re not as stylized as usual.  Okay, so this is still a Hong Kong action movie, but it’s no ‘Shaolin Mantis’ (here).  The action is pretty rough-and-tumble, especially the first fight David Chang gets into in the bathroom.  There’s a great moment early on.  Ti Lung is in a barbrawl trying to fend off a dozen or so guys in the second story of a tea house.  He’s doing fine, but the camera pans down to the first floor, where about thirty more guys are still waiting for him.  Oh, heroic bloodshed has never looked so good.

The movie moves along quickly and for the entire plot you’re hooked.  The solid performance from the lead gives the movie a certain credibility and fierceness.  The direction is top-notch.  There’s actually stuff like themes and symbolism, with great attention paid to the cinematography.  High camera angles mean an angel watching from above, and the framing makes you know the ending beforehand.  Looking at this, you can certainly see more work went into this movie than, say, ‘The Deadly Duo’ (here) or even ‘5 Shaolin Masters’ (here).  In fact, Chang Cheh and David Chiang won awards and the Asia Film Festival for this movie.  It’s very nice to watch and everybody should see it.

Special Features
Trailers
There are two ‘Vengeance’ trailers, the original and new ones, as well as trailers for ‘The Heroic Ones’ (here), ‘Heroes Two’ (here), ‘Blood Brothers’ and ‘Disciples of the 36th Chamber.  Apart from the old ‘Vengeance trailer, which is 2 minutes 20 seconds long, they’re all about a minute long.  The old trailers looks awful and it’s a testament to the work Celestial puts in to their DVDs.  The trailer also misspells ‘travel’ as ‘traval’.  The trailers are all good, though, with nice action bits throughout.  An interesting translation in the new ‘Veangeance’ trailer is that in the movie one word is translated as ‘Generalissimo’ but in the trailer it’s ‘Warlord’.

Movie Information
Okay, I’ll make this as short as possible, because I can’t say it any new way.  Celestial has the same extras on all their disks, so here goes:
-Movie Stills.  Unfortunately, there’s no behind the scenes gallery, but the movie stills are really nice.  With this movie, it’s not so hard.
-Original Poster.  Nice but nothing groundbreaking.  It’s interesting to see the evolution of posters from 1970s to 2000s Hong Kong, though.
-Production Notes.  Taken from the back of the DVD box, but shorter.
-Biography and Selected Filmography, with information on actors David Chiang, Wong Ping, Ti Lung and director Chang Cheh.  Nice information but it’s the same as other DVDs, if you’ve read them.  If this is your first Celestial DVD, it’s got nice information, but it’s not so long.

Elegant Trails – Chang Cheh
This is 17 ½ minutes long and is all about Chang Cheh.  You have various actors and directors talking about the man and his movies.  This is also on the ‘The Water Margin’ DVD, as are the other two.  It’s a brief overview of his life and movie career.  It tells you here that ‘The One-Armed Swordsman’ was the first movie to reach a million bucks at the box office.

Elegant Trails – David Chiang
Somewhat shorter, at 7 minutes and 40 seconds, this concentrates on David Chiang and his life and career.  Mr. Chiang himself talks about his life, Chang Cheh and the movies he did.  The piece finishes with a wedding ceremony.

Elegant Trails – Ti Lung
Now it’s Ti Lung’s turn.  He talks about, well, his life and career.  As with the other two featurettes, you see nice movie footage as he recalls the first movie scene in his career.  It’s a nice little featurette and you can learn about his life and movies.  This time the piece is 9 minutes long.

Audio
Officially the one track on this movie is Mandarin Dolby 5.1 but other than the centre speaker nothing is used.  The sound you hear, though, is heard really well.  Nothing is muffled or distorted.  All the dialogue clear and rather crisp.  The music and sound effects are all balanced well also.  Celestial did great work with the sound, and it’s as nice as the picture.

Video
2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen.  Another terrific picture from Celestial.  Even comparing it to other Celestial releases, I find this one is a little better.  Even in the background, David Chiang’s face is recognizable.  Any kind of defect, whether it be print or digital, is completely absent.  Colours are bright and although the darker scenes may look flat, it’s not a big deal.  They never flicker and they’re accurate.  It’s a great transfer and I’m completely happy with this picture.

2/3/2005