| Movie
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Extras
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| Audio
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Video
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This is the Celestial release. It’s region 3.
Movie
Quick: tell me the name of an actor that worked for Shaw Brothers in
the early ‘70s. That person is probably here. If I gave off
all the names of Shaw stars in this review, it would take up all the review.
I’ll get to that later, though, but for now I’ll say something else.
This is the epic of epics of Hong Kong cinema. It’s based on a 14th
century book telling the exploits of 108 heroes trying to fight off the
decadent government of the time. ‘The Water Margin’ is based on chapters
64-68 of the book.
The movie was directed by master director Chang Cheh (‘Two Champions of Shaolin’ (here), ‘The Heroic Ones’ (here)), with John Woo (‘Fist of the Double K’, ‘Hand of Death’ (here and here)) as assistant director. Once again, I can see Mr. Chang’s influence on Mr. Woo’s later work. The style is very nice, with nice camera moves and some humour interspersed within the drama. Once difference is that the tone here in never too serious. Mr. Chang handles everything very well. The drama is never heavy, the comedy is never silly and the fights are well shot.
Speaking of the fights, the movie has no less than 4 action directors! That’s not because one left and another came in, it’s because there are so many people fighting. The last huge brawl has some hundred or so people all fighting at the same time! So, the guys that worked on the movie had to know what they were doing.
Chan Chuen, who worked on John Woo’s first two directorial efforts, Tang Chia (‘Inframan’, ‘Death Duel’, ‘Human Lanterns’, ‘Green Snake’), Lau Kar-Wing (‘Drunken Monkey’, ‘Armour of God’, ‘5 Shaolin Masters’) and Liu Chia-Liang (‘Duel of Fists’, ‘The Spiritual Boxer’, ‘The 36th Chamber of Shaolin’ ‘The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter’) were the action directors on this movie (and the movies in parentheses). All of these guys worked for Shaw as actors, directors and action directors, and although this movie was made relatively early in their careers, they all did great jobs.
The story has a background (some 63 chapters by my count), but the movie doesn’t deal with that. I sort of like that. At first, I was a little confused, but I soon realized it didn’t matter, and everything became clear. The good guys became the good guys and the bad guys became the bad guys. The plot is very nice, and you can just guess the history that came before it. You actually wish this were a series of 30 movies instead of just two. The characters are story are great and wildly interesting.
Okay, so I won’t go listing off everybody in this movie because it would just take too long. I’ll just mention that you can see Lo Wei (!), who made Bruce Lee famous, Yuen Hua (‘Come Drink with Me’), Ti Lung (‘A Better Tomorrow’), Danny Lee (‘The Killer’), Lily Ho (‘Angel with the Iron Fists’, directed by Lo Wei) and Wu Ma (oh so many movies…) in small roles. The main stars are David Chiang and Tetsuro Tamba, and they do well. In fact, all the cast does very well.
The ride on this movie is great. It’s exciting and intriguing and you really wonder if that guy will ever be rescued. The action is great and the drama is great. I really like Mr. Chang’s touch for this movie. It never gets melodramatic and the humour is pretty nice. I can certainly see now why many people think latter-day movies in Hong Kong aren’t just as good.
Special Features
Trailers
‘The Water Margin’, (1:02), ‘Vengeance (1:02, here),
‘The Tiger and the Widow’ (1:08), ‘The Condemned’ (1:04) and ‘All Men are
Brothers’ (1:04, here) have revamped,
ADD-fied trailers. They are nice trailers, though. If you see
the ‘The Water Margin’ trailer, don’t be fooled. It Ti Lung is in
the movie, but it’s only a small part. His part in the sequel isn’t
much bigger, but he’s still in the two movies. The third movie has
a funny premise: salt smuggling. Not really something you consider
dangerous, is it? I suppose a long time ago there was money in it,
but not some different white stuff is being smuggled. Wouldn’t it
be funny if in a hundred years that white powdery substance was as common
as table salt and there was a different white powder being smuggled?
The three others are nice, with ‘The Condemned’ seeming most interesting.
Well, given that I’ve seen one of the movies and seen the trailer to the
other, I suppose it’s no surprise.
Movie Information
A photo gallery with Movie Stills and Behind the Scenes can be your
choice. The two galleries are great. The movie stills has nice
moments from the movie and the behind the scenes pictures are pretty extensive
considering the movie’s age and where it came from. You get a caption
telling you what you’re seeing. It’s a great gallery. Your
next choice can quite possibly be the Original Poster, which is better
than the sequel’s poster. I really like that virtually the entire
bottom third is covered in small pictures of the faces of the stars.
The Productions Notes are pretty researched: all they did was rephrase
the blurb on the back of the DVD box. Real production notes would’ve
been far more interesting and far more welcomed. The next possible
choice, ‘Biography and Selected Filmography’ is better. Information
about actors David Chiang, Ti Lung, Lily Ho, Chin Feng and Yueh Hua, and
director Chang Cheh can be added to your memory. For some reason,
Chin Feng’s filmography is much longer than the others’. Maybe it
was made earlier when IVL decided to put more information in the filmographies
sections. That brings up something: why did Celestial decided to
shorten their information? For example, reading David Chiang’s information
in an earlier release like ‘The Anonymous Heroes’ and reading in a later
release like this one, you get different information, but there it’s shorter
on the later release. It’s nice that they decided to change the biographies
and filmographies, but why make them shorter? Anyway, this DVD has
a few nice features about three people, which I’ll talk about right now
The Master – Chang Cheh
This is very nice. With the likes of David Chiang, John Woo,
Andy Lau, Tsui Hark, Wang Yu and others talking about Chang Cheh, it’s
really impressive. When I heard some offscreen voice talking about
the poetry of movement and the use of slow-motion, I immediately said,
‘Oh yeah, that’s John Woo talking’. The piece is informative and
discusses Mr. Chang’s influence on Hong Kong cinema. You see tons
of old clips (and these things show just how great Celestial’s restoration
work is), which is really great. Word of warning: if you haven’t
seen ‘Vengeance’, watch it before seeing this unless you want to know the
ending. This is about 17 ½ minutes and every second is captivating.
Elegant Trails: David Chiang
This is about 10 minutes shorter, at 7 minutes and 42 seconds.
This is no less interesting, with Mr. Chiang himself talking about Chang
Cheh and his own career. He talks of ‘The Heroic Ones’: during the
shoot it was so hot that two horses died of heat stroke. The feature
also talks about Mr. Chiang’s personal life, and you see his 25th wedding
anniversary party with his wife. You also see him meeting the weapons
master in 2003. They joke about how old they are now. It’s
very nice and quite interesting.
Elegant Trails: Ti Lung
This is a bit longer, being 9 minutes. It goes by mighty quickly,
though. Mr. Lung talks about his career, basically. There’s
no clear focus. He just talks about his start, his idols, his wife
and his life. It’s very interesting. I’m at a loss for words,
but believe me it’s definitely worth watching. These three featurettes
are also on this DVD.
Audio
This has been remixed in 5.1 and it’s a nice mix. It’s not great,
but it’s good enough. You’ve got some small ambient sounds like wind
and birds from the back and sides. Other than that, everything is
centered. That’s not so bad because everything is clear. There
are no pops or hisses, so all the Mandarin dialogue audible. Nice
job with the audio.
Video
2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. Once again, Celestial worked wonders.
The picture shouldn’t look this good, but it still does. The colours
are great and the black level is strong. The picture flickers slightly
and changes quality once or twice but it’s not as bad as I write it.
There are no specks or scratches. If you look very closely you can
see how much damage the print has (the fight between David Chiang and the
wrestler comes to mind), but then that shows you now much work Celestial
did. It’s a great picture.
21/11/2004