Taking excitement to another level, Dragon makes its way into home video on Blu-ray. The Chinese martial arts film has a good story, excellently choreographed fight scenes and superb cinematography for home viewing. The action gets intense and the film takes a few unexpected twists to its creative story. The presentation on Blu-ray is extremely good and the bonus features are excellent.
It’s 1917 and Liu Jin-xi (Donnie Yen) lives in a small Chinese village and makes paper for a living. While on the job in a local general store two gang members walk in and demand money. Not wanting to give up their small earnings, the store owner and his wife try to fight them off. Jin-xi sees the assault and jumps in to help. He is able to overcome the two men and the local judge for the district proclaims him a hero. When Xu Bai-jiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) an investigator gets suspicious of how this common man could kill two notorious men and survive, he starts looking into Jin-xi’s background. So starts a story of mystery, violence and retribution.
I like the characters, the plot and the cinematography. Director Peter Chan spools out his mystery introducing each of his characters and how they fit into the play. Following the action in the beginning, Chan slows down to bring out the mystery behind Jin-xi and we are treated to an intriguing mind game between Jin-xi and Bai-jiu before it starts to pick up speed again. In the process we are treated to an amazingly choreographed fight between Shi San Liang (Kara Hui) a member of the 72 Daemons gang and Jin-xi.
The whole production reminded me of a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but as I found out in the Bonus features without all the wires in every scene. As it turns out, the actors and some amazing stuntmen did most of the jumps, falls, leaps and spins without the aid of special apparatus. The cinematographers used many lenses, cameras and special lighting to get the shots you will see in the film, and they did it from some very tenuous positions.
The acting in the film overshadows a lot of what I have seen in most Chinese films. Even beyond the main leads, we are treated to performances that stand up to films like Iron Monkey, Kiss of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon. Donnie Yen makes a great Jin-xi with his great facial expressions, determined attitude and even as a loving father. Yen has been around for awhile starting his career in 1984 at 19-years-old and appearing and doing most of his stunts in 57 titles including some Hollywood hits like An Empress and the Warriors, Blade II and Shanghai Knights.
Dragon has been rated R by the MPAA for violence so please be sure to watch it first before turning it over the kids.
There are some very good bonus features on the Blu-ray disc.
BONUS FEATURES:
- “The Making of Dragon”- features 8 segments that take you though the challenging process to make the film as entertaining as possible. Each of the segments are outstanding including “Risks and Rewards”- I liked this the best because it goes into the tricky camera set-ups and the hazardous stunts, “Choosing Jimmy Wang Yu”, “A Different Role for Takeshi Kaneshiro” (He is noted for his performance in House of Flying Daggers), “The Ins and Outs of Acupuncture”, “Family Dynamics”, “Tang Wei in the Countryside” and “Wai Ying Hung on working with Donnie Yen”
- “Featurettes with Donnie Yen”- this one’s in English as Donnie speaks it fluently and he talks about the film from his perspective. I liked this trio of features the most.
- “Lost in Jianghu” is a music video that was written, composed and performed by Dou Wei. The dark and powerful song is also used as the background music in many of the scenes from the film. As part of the video we are treated to a recap of the movie.
The video quality of the movie with its 1080p widescreen presentation with an Aspect Ratio of 2.35:1 is bright and colorful. The scenes of the village, forests, and rivers with falls, landscapes and even the dark interiors are excellent. The fight scenes are clear and the slow motion comes off nicely during some of the action. The only drawback and it’s only a pet peeve that I have to live with, is that the aspect ratio on my 16×9 television has the bars top and bottom. But, you know, it’s worth it with this exciting production.
The audio quality played on my sound system with the 5.1 DTSHD Master Audio is extremely good. The action sequences are very exciting and the Chinese language from the actors shows a lot of emotion. My surround speaks got a good workout and several scenes were greatly enhanced by the special effects sound.
FINAL ANALYSIS: A very good collectable Blu-ray for those who love Asian martial arts films and a thriller for action lovers. [rating=6]
Specifications and additional film information:
- Cast: Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Kara Hui and Wei Tang
- Directed by: Peter Chan
- MPAA Rating: R for violence
- Genre: Action, Foreign, Martial Arts
- Running Time: 1 hr 38 min
- Street Date: April 16, 2013
- Original Theatrical Release: July 4, 2011
- Language: Mandarin Chinese with English Subtitles
- Format: DVD
- Audio: 5.1 DTSHD Master Audio
- Video: 1080p Widescreen 2.35:1 Aspect Ratio
- Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
- Number of Discs: 1 Disc
- Distributed by: Anchor Bay Entertainment
