Dynamo Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		2.0
Audio		2.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.0

Dynamo Blu-ray Movie Review

You say 'Bruce Lee', I say 'Bruce Li'.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 30, 2020

Kung Fu Trailers of Fury and Return of Kung Fu Trailers of Fury offer really fun aggregations of “chop socky” trailers that manage to rather capably detail at least part of the wild and often wacky history of martial arts films from and (at least ostensibly initially) for the Asian market. One of the things these two releases offer an excellent example of is the so-called “Bruceploitation” phase that seemed to subsume a lot of that region’s film market after Bruce Lee’s untimely death in 1973. The sheer number of “Bruceploitation” properties and especially actors can be a little daunting at times, and there are whole corners of the internet devoted to these phenomena for the curious Googler. Among the more successful Bruce Lee wannabes was Bruce Li, who of course was given that name to cash in on Lee’s legacy. Li made well over thirty films that could arguably be stuffed into the “Bruceploitation” pigeonhole, with all of them appearing from 1974 to 1982. Several of these took audacity to a whole new level by featuring the actual Bruce Lee’s name in their titles (and marketing campaigns). Dynamo is a bit of a different animal, and in fact has a whole “meta” aspect, since it concerns a female advertising executive who arrives in Hong Kong in 1973 during the gargantuan funeral observances following Lee’s death. She’s curious about the crowds seen overflowing the already bustling Hong Kong urban center (courtesy of some pretty shoddy looking stock footage), and after her driver tells her that Lee memorabilia is going for big bucks (relatively speaking), you can see the wheels turning in her mind and a bit later in the tale she hits upon a foolproof marketing gambit: she will find a new “Bruce Lee”. In the meantime, though, she shows up at her advertising agency to announce she's in charge, the old guard is out, and there are exciting plans on the horizon.

Kind of interestingly, the shorter edit for television which is included as a supplement temporarily ditches this whole prefatory exercise entirely (at least for a moment; it does show up later), instead jumping to what is this film's second major character introduction, the appearance of Bruce Li (rather interestingly and perhaps even more saliently "meta" billing himself under his real name, Ho Tsung-Tao) as Lee Tien-yee, a martial arts student who has so impressed his master that the master bequeaths him his family's legendary sword. That then quickly leads to the first "fight" sequence, though in this instance it's Lee and another student going at it with each other at the master's request, just so he can see his ancestral weapon in action.

Needless to say, Lee turns out to be just the person advertising maven Miss Mary (Mary Hon) has imagined might be out there, and the two predictably "meet cute", leading to one of this film’s central conceits, with Lee being tapped for stardom (he makes his living as a cab driver, so the lure is supposedly “real”), but rebelling and refusing to “take direction”, especially from the patently corrupt people who want to exploit him. In this regard, it's perhaps interesting to note that the film actually places much of the action in the milieu of the advertising industry, rather than movie making, as if to provide at least a bit "plausible deniability" for the film industry. Things ultimately get more heated when some advertising rivals of Miss Mary decide Lee needs to be taken care of, one way or the other. It’s actually all admittedly ridiculous, but that said, it can also be rather interesting, especially considering the film also refers to a kind of crass commercialization which is not to subtly linked to Western influences, and how that aspect provides at least some of the motivation to find a suitable “replacement” for Bruce Lee, since, hey, there’s money to be made.

Had Dynamo been slightly less ridiculous at its core, it actually may have transcended the Bruceploitation subgenre in a way it seems to be aiming for. Li by any other name may not have the inherent charisma of Bruce Lee, but he moves well and some of the fight scenes here are rather well staged.

Dynamo Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Screenshots 1 through 14 are from the main theatrical feature. Screenshots 15 through 19 are from the alternate 16mm cut that is of the edited TV version.

Dynamo is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of VCI Entertainment and MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. The back cover of this release states this is a "new 2K restoration of original 35mm English print", and so the first thing to consider is the source element itself. It's not in great condition in any number of ways, including some noticeably faded color (color temperature is extremely widely variant throughout the presentation), and lots of little nicks and scratches and other signs of age related wear and tear along the way. There's some kind of peculiar looking anamorphic squeezing several times just at the corners of the frame (see the left side of screenshot 14 for an example), that I'm assuming must have been inherited from the source. This is another VCI offering that seems to have been filtered pretty aggressively, and there are some kind of peculiar looking encoding anomalies at various points. If you frame advance though the film during the fight scene starting at around 1:21:40 and then for the following few seconds, and you'll be able to see a really odd looking crosshatched pattern, a kind of digital grid that almost looks like endless rows of little boxes covering the entire frame, though this is probably most noticeable on Lee's yellow jumpsuit or the white shirt of his nemesis. That said, a brief shot of the villain's leg up in the air may be the most glaring example of what almost looks like macroblocking as expressed as a geometric constant (the "boxes" are all the same size). (Just to be clear the foregoing anomaly was clearly if perhaps slightly subliminally visible to me at regular play speed, so I went back and did a frame advance to figure out what I had seen fleetingly at normal speed.) Occasional passing close-ups can offer at least decent amounts of detail (see screenshot 4), but this has a pretty soft looking appearance a lot of the time. Contrast is also variable, with a lot of the blacks having a noticeable hazy, milky overlay.

Dynamo Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Dynamo features an English dub in LPCM 2.0 mono. The good news here is that VCI has kindly provided optional English subtitles, which in this case may be mandatory, as the track has pretty anemic amplitude, many of the actors are very thickly accented, and equalization is virtually nonexistent. Some of the music makes it through the gauntlet surprisingly well, all things considered.

Dynamo Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

I frankly had no idea that my home state of Oregon and hometown of Portland were such hotbeds of kung fu cinema curation and restoration, but both of the new non-commentary supplements below feature guys who are either in the state or Portland itself. The two new supplements were done by Michael Worth and his Grizzly Peak Productions (kind of hilariously thanked as "Grizzy Peak" on a text card that appears at disc boot up). Worth contributed to the commentary, so maybe even he's hanging out here, too.

• Dynamo: 16mm Alternate Version (1080p; 2.37:1; 1:20:40) is touted as being a new 2K scan of a television edit that came from Michael Worth's personal collection. It's obviously shorter than the "official" version, but that may actually redound to this version's benefit. I've included screenshots from this version in positions 15 through 19 so that those interested can get at least a bit of an idea as to what it looks like, but this looks slightly anamorphically squeezed to me. The color here is darker and more tipped toward red than on the main feature, and there is additional damage on display that the main feature doesn't include. That said, those who like more visible grain will probably like the grittier appearance of this version.


• Audio Commentary features Michael Worth, author of The Bruceploitation Bible, and self-described "superfan" Iain Lee, who according to the back cover is some kind of UK radio star. This is a fun and conversational track, and one that should certainly appeal to Bruceploitation fans, though things do have a tendency to go off on various tangents.


• "Dirty Kung Fu" (1080p; 8:02) is listed as Kung Fu Reborn on the back cover and is described as being a "featurette on restoration and preservation of Kung Fu film elements." That said, the piece never makes clear whether the two guys profiled here did work on this particular Kung Fu film, though I'm assuming they did. The featurette travels first to picturesque Baker City (formerly Baker, but I digress) in Eastern Oregon to profile Jeremy Brunner of Reel Vault, who I'm assuming did the transfer, though that's never explicitly stated, though again I'm jumping to certain conclusions based on some of his comments about scanning and a brief shot of him at a workstation that looks like it has Dynamo up on the monitor. Also profiled is Portlander Dan Halstead, who I'm thinking may have provided the theatrical version print source element, since he shows some of the many reels of film in his collection, though again this is not made overly clear. He does evidently curate regular Kung Fu screenings as Portland's venerable Hollywood Theater, if Google is to be believed.


• "Drawing Dynamo " (1080p; 6:07) is an interview with Ian McEwan, who did the cover art and who is also another Portlander.


• Dynamo Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:08)

Dynamo Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fans of the Bruceploitation subgenre pretty much know what they're going to get, but Dynamo is kind of cheekily self-referencing and seems to be aware of its own exploitative tendencies. There's silliness in abundance, of course, and the substandard English dub may only add to that perception. This is obviously going to be a niche product for a certain kind of aficionado, but even those folks should probably temper their expectations as to the technical presentation here. The supplements are rather interesting and may actually provide as much interest as the main feature.