Seven Warriors Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Seven Warriors Blu-ray Movie Review

Same quantity, less quality.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 3, 2014

Is it possible to roll over in your grave before you’re even dead? Akira Kurosawa may have at least looked askance when his classic 1954 film Seven Samurai became John Sturges’ Americanized The Magnificent Seven (along with several sequels starting in 1960 and continuing on for over a decade). Sturges' film at least had the benefit of a smartly rethought setting and some great performances, along with the director's trademark handling of action sequences. But the iconic Japanese director may well be spectrally furious with what has happened with some of his most legendary films since he shuffled off this mortal coil. One of the touchstones of 20th century cinema, Kurosawa’s immortal Rashômon, became the basis for a pretty dunderheaded follow-up called Tajomaru: Avenging Blade in 2009. But some twenty years earlier, Seven Samurai itself (themselves?) was adapted yet again in a fitfully amusing but ultimately pointless reboot called Seven Warriors. This 1989 outing is noisy, frenetic and even occasionally fun at times, but it’s a pale (one might go so far as to say bloodless) reinvention of Kurosawa’s original. Rather sloppily directed by Terry Tong (with the somewhat better fight choreography handled by Sammo Hung), and scored with what must certainly be one of the most inept sets of cues ever slathered onto a soundtrack, Seven Warriors lumbers about, attempting to revisit a lot of the tropes in Kurosawa’s masterpiece without ever offering much of anything new and finally kind of sullying the memory of the famous film.

There were probably no two more disparate entities in the Asian film community than Kurosawa and The Shaw Brothers. Kurosawa—intellectual, measured, often unusually profound. The Shaw Brothers—out to entertain more than anything, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, not overly concerned with any hokey elements that might be part and parcel of their output. And this mismatch may account more than anything for the weird ambience of Seven Warriors quite a bit of the time, for it in fact plays like Kurosawa reimagined by The Shaw Brothers.

The film follows the same general template as Seven Samurai, albeit in a different timeframe, moving the action to the 1920s during China’s so-called Warlord Era. Once again noble villagers are subject to pillaging by local bandits, and they attempt to fight back by recruiting a coterie of disparate souls to protect them. Some of the seven in this film have military backgrounds, but divorced from the iconic world of the samurai, things seem decidedly more pedestrian here. The first half or so of the film sets up the general premise and then introduces the main players, with virtually each of the seven fitting snugly into some easily delineated type, like a martial arts expert or the sweet country boy named Wong Wai Mo (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) who is one of the chief focal characters throughout the film.

This first half relies perhaps a bit too much on silly comedy elements, with buffoonish characters acting like fools. That changes, at least somewhat, in the film’s final half, when finally the showdown between the titular seven and the bad guys finally rolls into view. But even in this element, the film is perhaps not what some people will be expecting. The action sequences in Seven Warriors are actually surprisingly minimal, with the bulk of the film given over to the aforementioned comedy bits and some not very involving character bits.

It’s not often that I call out one specific element of a less than successful film, but this is one of those rare exceptions, for the score of Seven Warriors is one of the most overblown and annoying “contributions” in my personal experience. Ugly synth sounds are slathered onto this film, some attempting to evoke ethnic instruments, but mostly just calling attention to themselves, certainly the worst thing an effective score should do in a film. The music is also mixed very loudly throughout the film, which I assume mimics the original theatrical exhibition, something that only further exacerbates the issue. A well done score should support the action or dramatic flow, but here it clubs the listener over the head with completely outlandish sounds. It may in fact act as a distraction from a not very good film, but that’s small consolation for such shoddy work.

Seven Warriors Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Seven Warriors is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The elements utilized for this transfer don't have a lot of damage, but they've not aged particularly well, with somewhat faded color that looks kind of pallid quite a bit of the time. The brightly lit outdoor sequences actually look rather good, with decent detail and clarity (see screenshot 4). What plagues this presentation more than anything, though, is persistent compression artifacts that crop up regularly during the many darker scenes, and quite a bit of this film takes place in dimly lit environments. Contrast is not always quite as dialed in as some would hope. Some odd lighting effects as well as not very well handled special effects like gunsmoke often rob certain scenes of much detail at all (see screenshots 6 and 18 for examples).

Seven Warriors Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Seven Warriors' lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is hobbled, perhaps fatally, but the horrible music mentioned above in the main body of the review. Other elements fare at least relatively more successfully, with dialogue presented cleanly and some good foley effects placed directionally in the action sequences, though even these elements are sometimes overshadowed by the score, which is mixed far too loudly at times, obliterating everything else in the soundtrack. There's some slight quasi-phasing in evidence from this repurposed surround mix which occasionally crops up in things like gunfire.

Seven Warriors Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (480i; 3:01)

Seven Warriors Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Some people may get a kick out of this often frenetic reboot of Kurosawa's classic, but probably only for those who are willing to completely divorce the film from the shadow of the earlier classic. But why take the time on a pale imitation when you can have the original? Or even The Magnificent Seven? Though Seven Warriors boasts an impressive cast, it is haphazard in execution and too lo-fi to warrant much more than some passing curiosity as to how something like this ever seemed like a good idea in the first place.