Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

A Man Called Tiger Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 25, 2024

The hapless character Terry Malloy so memorably portrayed by Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront famously tells his brother Charley (Rod Steiger), "I coulda been a contender", and at least a little similarly real life actor Jimmy Wang Yu may have ended up feeling more or less the same, though Wang might have understandably altered the statement to "I coulda stayed a contender". As some of the supplements on this disc get into, Jimmy was the (to pun horribly and link to another property with a kinda sorta Elia Kazan connection) Golden Boy at Shaw Brothers, especially after the one two punch (kick?) of The Chinese Boxer and One-Armed Boxer . Wang actually jettisoned the Shaw Brothers after he attained (momentary) superstar status, and then courted even more controversy when that decision ended up more or less getting him exiled from the Hong Kong film industry for a while. Wang ended up making Taiwanese productions for Golden Harvest among others, and was still more or less cruising along until some upstart named Bruce Lee or something came along to eclipse Wang's "top dog" position. Some of the supplements on this disc get into some of the kind of funny/sad interactions and casting decisions involving these two, but as even some of the knowledgeable commentary providers on this disc mention, there's little doubt that Wang simply didn't have quite the athleticism and (sorry, another pun forthcoming) fighting chops that seemed to be almost genetically encoded into Lee. That actually apparently extends to this very film, as both the back cover of this release and some of the supplementary commentaries state that this was supposed to be another collaboration between Lee and director Lo Wei, until Lee's exploding stardom, evident dislike for Lo Wei and "what I really want to do is direct" sensibility put the kibosh on the idea.

The plot machinations of A Man Called Tiger are frankly pretty rote, with Jin Hu (Wang Yu) on the hunt to avenge his father's supposed suicide, which Jin suspects was actually a murder. The more interesting thing about the production may be its setting in Japan, and the attempts by Jin to infiltrate the yakuza. As Frank Djeng in particular mentions in one of the commentaries, the film is also a bit unusual in terms of the sheer number of featured females who populate the story, though nightclub singer named Keiko (Maria Yi) figures most prominently, and also allows the film to offer a couple of actually rather nice songs.

This disc may hold some additional interest since it offers both the original version and the frankly kind of incredibly redacted re-release version, which was shorn of around a third of the original's running time, and is in some ways a distinctly different viewing experience.

A Man Called Tiger Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Man Called Tiger is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eureka! Entertainment with AVC encoded 1080p transfers in 2.39:1. The back cover states that both versions of the film are culled from 2K restorations, without any real information as to the provenance of the element. Eureka's insert booklet is similarly devoid of technical data, and instead offers their typical "viewing notes" and "calibration" advice. One way or the other, this is a rather striking looking presentation for the most part, with really nice densities, a well suffused palette, and generally nice looking detail levels, at least when framings and lighting conditions allow. The nightclub material in particular has some almost Bava-esque hues at play, all of which tend to resonate extremely well. This is another Asian outing that has some peculiar anamorphic oddities (Mike Leeder and Arne Venema briefly joke about "Dyalascope" on their commentary track), including a few passing moments that show the same kind of weird skewed appearance that I mentioned with regard to several films in The Game of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1, where the rectangle of the frame almost looks like its been twisted into a parallelogram, with everything in the frame "leaning" toward one side or the other. This anomaly is certainly not as pronounced as it's been in several other films I've reviewed, but eagle eyed videophiles may see it in passing. Grain resolves naturally throughout.

A Man Called Tiger Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Both versions of the film on the disc offer either Mandarin or English tracks in LPCM 2.0 Mono. This is one release where there are pretty manifest differences between the two (on both versions of the film). The Mandarin track is rather muffled sounding with anemic amplitude (at least when compared to the English track), and some compressed sounding high frequencies. On the other hand, the English language track is so loud and overpowering that it comes close to distorting, and the high end is extremely bright at times, to the point of near painfulness. All of this said, everything is delivered with reasonable fidelity and no real problems in terms of understanding dialogue. Optional English subtitles are available.

A Man Called Tiger Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Uncut Theatrical Version (1:52:55) and Re-Release Version (1:19:58) are accessible from the Main Menu.


• Commentary by Frank Djeng and Michael Worth is available for the Uncut Theatrical Version.


• Commentary by Mike Leeder and Arne Venema is available for the Uncut Theatrical Version.


• Cutting Tiger, Hidden Subtitles (HD; 6:55) is a frankly kind of odd piece by Brandon Bentley which is advertised as a "brand new video essay", but which seems to actually be Bentley providing narrated snippets of sections that were edited out of the film (sourced from what appears to be an extremely shoddy videotape source). This could have used a bit more explanation, in my not so humble opinion.


• Do You Know What Sadness Means? (HD; 2:39) is listed as a "music video", but is simply the section of the film with Keiko singing the song. Audio is Dolby Digital and has considerably more reverb than the soundtrack version(s).


• Because I Have Your Love (HD; 2:09) is another quasi "music video".


• Textless Opening (HD; 2:45)


• Trailer (HD; 3:44)

Additionally the keepcase features a reversible sleeve and encloses both a nicely appointed insert booklet and a folded mini poster. Packaging features a slipcover.

A Man Called Tiger Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A Man Called Tiger doesn't try to explore any really new story ideas other than potentially its setting in Japan, but it offers some decent fight scenes and a colorful ambience. Technical merits are generally solid, and the two commentaries are very enjoyable. Recommended.