6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
An ex cop and his ex partner decide to follow up on investigation of a series of murders that ended their careers and shamed them, when identical murders begin again.
Starring: Lun-Mei Gwei, Fan Liao, Xuebing Wang, Jingyang Ni, Ailei YuForeign | 100% |
Drama | 51% |
Film-Noir | 9% |
Crime | 1% |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Mandarin: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Mandarin: Dolby Digital 2.0
English, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional)
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Chances are if you were to quiz a coterie of international cinema fans about what came to mind at the mention of the phrase “Chinese genre film”, you’d get an at least varied array of responses that might include everything from Shaw Brothers entries like The Five Deadly Venoms to Jackie Chan’s goofball antics in Drunken Master to more contemporary historical epics like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Red Cliff: Part I & Part II to actioners like Infernal Affairs. But despite the obvious variety that greets lovers of Chinese film, my hunch is very few fans would have film noir spring to consciousness. That seeming deficit might soon be altered as Black Coal, Thin Ice gains greater renown, an opportunity that seems (as yet anyway) curiously unrealized even after the film took home the Golden Bear at the 64th Berlin Film Festival held in 2014. (Black Coal, Thin Ice also won the Silver Bear for Best Actor Liao Fan.) While the combination of China and noir might be “exotic” enough to hook some fans, Black Coal, Thin Ice exhibits what might be called an almost Scandinavian ambience that those who got a chill or two out of The Dragon Tattoo Trilogy - Extended Edition might recognize. The film traffics in some pretty disturbing content, including dismemberment for the dead and abuse for the living, and its emotional toll becomes a rather heavy slog as things progress. Beginning with a startling “what is that?” sequence that charts the strange journey of something that ends up drifting through a sea of coal at a refinery, Black Coal, Thin Ice delivers a consistently fascinating parade of images that may help to distract both from some of the discomfiting subject matter as well as certain narrative stumbles in the storytelling itself.
Black Coal, Thin Ice is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is a curiously soft looking presentation for such a recent film, though some of that gauziness can be attributed to the wintry setting, where mist and frost intercede, acting as almost a scrim at times through which the imagery is seen. Diao has a tendency to shoot in low light environments, and quite a bit of this transfer suffers from murk and inchoate shadow detail. A lot of the film has been graded to a kind of sickly yellow-green hue (as can be seen in several screencaptures accompanying this review), something which further debilitates detail and fine detail. There's also fairly recurrent noise throughout this presentation, at times clumping to a predictable yellow sheen, but at other times assuming more of a purple-red ambience. In brightly lit environments, the palette pops well enough and detail improves markedly.
Black Coal, Thin Ice's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is quite subtle and nuanced at time, but bursts forth with alacrity in at least one notable sequence where shots are fired. Other moments are infused with an almost subliminal sense of sound design, with slightly muffled effects giving a subconscious stifling feeling without drawing that much attention to themselves. Dialogue is cleanly presented and well prioritized, and Zi Wen's minimalistic score also sounds fine.
Black Coal, Thin Ice is incredibly strong on mood, though its central mystery ends up being a bit less compelling than might be optimal. Performances are first rate, but the film's real calling card is its emphasis on sometimes outré, almost hallucinatory, imagery and a palpable sense of doom. Video quality is a bit lackluster here, but audio is fine. Taken as a whole, Black Coal, Thin Ice comes Recommended.
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