Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Drug War Blu-ray Movie Review

Just say "yes" to this exciting film.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 16, 2013

We often tend to have perhaps at least slightly incorrect assessments of foreign cultures at times, especially when those cultures are what we term as closed. Therefore, many Westerners probably think of North Korea as a vast expanse of hungry, misinformed people, and while that may at least approach the truth, when an outreach like that documented in The Pyongyang Concert occurs, some preconceptions may fall by the wayside (let’s leave Dennis Rodman’s “diplomatic” overtures out of the mix for the time being), as evidenced by the bright, happy, smiling (and seemingly well fed) North Koreans who attended the New York Philharmonic concert in that piece. The concert took place in 2008, just a few months before Westerners had another glimpse at a different culture which until relatively recently was shrouded in secrecy. The Summer Olympics in Beijing offered a huge spectacle and at least with regard to the mammoth opening ceremonies featured a glimpse at the Chinese that perhaps only reinforced what many more liberally skewed nations already thought—namely, that the residents of that country were an almost Borg-like consortium of group-think adherents who moved in lock step and were incapable of independent movement or thought. The truth of course is somewhat more nuanced. My wife and kids and I engaged in a really interesting and worthwhile exchange program a couple of years ago where we hosted a young Chinese boy and then my youngest son went to live with that boy’s family in China. While some elements of our interchange were a little startling (only one of the Chinese kids over here had ever heard of the Tiananmen Square uprising, and she stated outright that she had been told rather forcefully to never talk about it), other elements revealed a startling similarity to our own kids. All of the Chinese youths had iPhones which were loaded with pop and rock tunes (mostly American, I might add), and while their knowledge of some controversial aspects of recent Chinese history may have been lacking, they were more or less completely up to speed on all sorts of pop cultural phenomena then spreading across the globe. And so it’s probably unfair and maybe even unwise to paint any culture with broad strokes, especially when that painting is done from the standpoint of relative ignorance. Which brings us to the bristling 2012 Johnnie To film Drug War, which casts an eye on what is obviously a global problem, but one which few would probably instantly think of as being an issue in China of all places: drug use, specifically methamphetamines.

While it may be just a little surprising to hear that China evidently has a major drug problem, what may not strike people as surprising is the nation’s law enforcement response to the issue: those found guilty of selling drugs are subject to the death penalty. That draconian way of handling things sets up the central gambit of Drug War. When a dealer named Timmy Choi (Louis Koo) gets caught after crashing his car in a drug induced state of disequilibrium, he realizes that the only way out of his predicament is to cooperate with the police—or at least pretend to. And therein lies the interpersonal cat and mouse game that informs much of this rather low key but nonetheless incredibly tense and exciting outing, which sees dedicated and hardbitten police captain Zhang (Sun Honglei) going undercover with Choi in order to infiltrate some rampant drug rings and, hopefully, get to the real people in charge.

To opens the film with an exciting simultaneous unfolding of Choi driving his car erratically through busy urban streets and a huge sting operation Zhang has set up at a highway toll booth. That operation leads to the arrest of several so-called “drug mules”, who have swallowed huge amounts of meth in plastic packets and who are brought to a nearby hospital to—well—get rid of them, so to speak. There’s a kind of funny-gross scene of Zhang cleaning off some of the packets in a sink, which is countered by the horror of seeing one mule who starts hemorrhaging when the packets inside his body explode. By chance, Choi is brought to this same hospital after his spectacular car crash, and that’s when the bulk of the film’s main storyline kicks in.

Drug War is on its surface a procedural, documenting Zhang’s team’s efforts to bring a large drug cartel to justice, but what actually provides the more compelling interest here is the very subtle interplay between Zhang and Choi, where roles are seemingly well defined but tend to shift ever so slightly as the case unfolds. When Zhang goes undercover, there’s a patently odd scene when Choi introduces Zhang to a dealer up the food chain, a guy named Brother Haha (Hao Ping), a character who lives up to his name and never stops laughing even as he’s inviting Zhang to sample some of his wares. To actually indulges in a few of these weirdly comic moments, which do provide a little relief from the overall tension the film indulges in, but which simultaneously may strike some as a distraction.

Other than the occasional kind of odd comedic elements, the rest of Drug War is an unbelievably tense and well done film which builds slowly but surely to a devastating climax. Those coming to this film expecting a knock ‘em, sock ‘em action-fest may well be surprised at how character driven this outing is. That said, the final 20 minutes or so of the film is a frighteningly real seeming shootout between so many parties that it’s actually hard to keep track of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Making things even more dangerous is the fact that this melée breaks out right next to a school where there are a gaggle of kids entering the building. In fact, Choi ends up taking a school bus at one point with two terrified kids huddling in the back seats. To stages this sequence stunningly, with towering crane shots alternating with close-ups that are so intimate it seems like we’re peering into various characters’ psyches.

There’s a certain déjà vu all over again feeling as the film moves into its ineluctable coda, where one major character (and a lot of minor characters) are dead and another major character is facing death. In a chilling final scene, To brings home a terrifying visual exemplar of being able to run, but not hide.

Drug War Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Drug War is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is a beautifully sharp and well detailed high definition presentation aside from one or two relatively minor issues. To and his cinematographer Siu-keung Cheng did color grade this fairly dramatically in post, often casting things in cool blue or slate gray tones, but perhaps surprisingly, that doesn't affect fine detail much if at all. Contrast and black levels are also generally strong and consistent in this presentation, helping to keep the many shrouded interior scenes nicely defined with well above average shadow detail. One recurrent anomaly is a kind of milky overlay that occurs in several scenes that take place inside cars (a lot of this film takes place inside cars and trucks). That issue adds a touch of softness and sucks just a bit of fine detail out of the proceedings, but otherwise this is a really solid looking release that doesn't suffer from any egregious artifacting or other compression issues.

Drug War Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Drug War features an aggressive and nicely immersive lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. (The film is evidently in both Mandarin and Cantonese, and so we have opted to use the generic Chinese in our specs listing above.) Dialogue is cleanly and clearly presented, but what really sets this film apart is the great attention to sound effects, which include everything from motors revving to the bustling sounds of various urban environments to the bristling shootout that caps the film. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is quite wide.

Drug War Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 2:03)

Drug War Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Drug War is structurally quite interesting, keeping its action elements relatively tamped down until an absolutely devastating finale. But even with a relative dearth of in your face set pieces, Drug War is never less than completely compelling. Buoyed by two fantastically visceral lead performances (and a wealth of fantastic supporting ones), and only slightly hobbled by some ill conceived comedic elements, Drug War once again affirms what a genre master Johnnie To is. This Blu-ray doesn't have much to offer in the supplements department, but its video and audio are stellar and this release comes Highly recommended.