7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Police captain Zhang partners with a drug lord named Timmy Choi after he is arrested. To avoid the death penalty, Choi agrees to reveal information about his partners who operate a cocaine ring.
Starring: Honglei Sun, Louis Koo, Yi Huang, Yunxiang Gao, Michelle YeForeign | 100% |
Drama | 8% |
Crime | 4% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Chinese: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Chinese: Dolby Digital 2.0
The characters speak both Mandarin and Cantonese, so using the generic Chinese designation is best.
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
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.
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 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 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.
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