Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

Switch Blu-ray Movie Review

This 'Switch' is set permanently to the on position.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 16, 2014

In case you’ve missed any number of high profile American action films of the past few years, you can get a “nice” Reader’s Digest approximation of several of them, albeit in Chinese, by watching Switch, one of those in your face adventure-paloozas that never lets up with its onslaught of visual and aural assaults, perhaps to keep the viewer (and listener) from realizing there’s not much “there” there. Take a dollop of Mission: Impossible, mix in a soupcon of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, sprinkle a bit of special effects wizardry from Minority Report and then just for good measure add a helping teaspoon or two of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and you have some approximation of the mélange that comprises this frenetic, occasionally incomprehensible, but typically sleek and enjoyable picture. Oh, and lest I forget, the actual baseline plot owes just a bit to National Treasure (of all things), though intead of the priceless Declaration of Independence, Switch sets a variety of machinations swirling around a priceless objet d’art from the 14th century, a kind of scrolled painting called “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains”, a piece which had been ripped in half centuries ago and which is now part of a massive attempt by competing forces to “reunite” the halves so that—well, your guess is as good as mine, though Switch is definitely a film where the destination really is of no major consequence, since it’s the manic journey that makes up the bulk of the entertainment value.

Switch starts at about 90 miles per hour and rarely slows down for the bulk of its running time, madly gallivanting from Dubai to various Chinese locales, perhaps in search of some coherence. The film opens with a blatant rip off of the famous scene in Mission: Impossible where Tom Cruise defies the electronic eyes protecting a priceless object by lowering himself on wires into a vault. This time, however, it’s a woman being lowered (what innovation!), but, in an actual surprise, it turns out she’s only one person intent on getting the priceless treasure. That sets up what is one of the film’s central plot points, namely that there are competing interests out to snatch the art scroll and that they’ll do just about anything—including kill—to succeed.

Andy Lau contributes his typically suave and stolid manner as a secret agent of sorts named Xiao Jinhan, who is aware of the various plots to steal the art (or at least half of it), but whose attempts to prevent its theft seem to end in failure fairly early in the film. Though the overly convoluted presentation here doesn’t make things overly clear, it turns out that Xiao’s wife Lin Yuyan (Zhang Jingchu) is a different type of agent, a top secret cop tasked with coming up with a reliable security system to keep the art safe (three guesses if she succeeds, and the first two don’t count). Lin’s career is evidently top secret from Xiao himself, in an obvious tip of the fedora to Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

On the villainous side of the equation, Switch indulges in both literal and figurative overkill. Instead of one central bad guy that the audience can fix upon and hiss appropriately, writer-director Jay Sun ups the ante (and not in a good way) by having competing nemeses compete for attention, meaning that none of them ever really musters much momentum. Two of the evil masterminds at least have a certain perverse allure, including a kind of faux blonde yakuza named Yamamoto (Tong Dawei), a nasty ponytailed guy who has no problem having one of his exotic female acolytes chop off her finger with a cigar cutter so that Yamamoto can win a bet with another of the bad guys. The other interesting villain is a weird elderly lady known as The Empress (Siqin Gaowa), a bizarre wheelchair bound doyenne who carries around the ashes of her husband in an hourglass. If it’s not already apparent, Switch is long on style points, if completely short on comprehensibility and narrative clarity.

Switch is one of those films that so relentlessly browbeats the audience that it become obvious that even the filmmakers aren’t completely sure of what they want to do, and so have decided to throw as much on the screen as possible in the hopes that sufficient distractions will keep most people from wondering too intently what exactly is actually going on. And so the best way to approach Switch is quite simple: stop caring what is happening, and simply let it happen. The film is breathlessly paced, even as it time shifts backwards and forwards on at least a couple of occasions, and the set pieces come quickly and in rapid succession. And despite the generally chaotic nature of the film, the final act does manage to generate some true excitement, especially when Yamamoto’s coterie of deadly females take on the heroes in the unavoidable final showdown. Switch is big, noisy and flashy. It doesn’t make one whit of sense most of the time, but there’s never a lack of shiny objects on the screen.

Switch Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Switch is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.38:1. This digitally shot feature looks fantastic in high definition, with a crisp and clear image that offers some expansive depth of field in several outdoor shots, while maintaining excellent fine detail in close-ups and even midrange shots. Colors are bold and varied, and while Sun has color graded certain sequences (Lau's interior Minority Report inspired control headquarters scenes are all skewed toward the blue end of the spectrum), contrast remains strong and consistent and fine detail is never compromised.

Switch Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Though it's officially listed as Mandarin, the main DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track on this Blu-ray is actually in a variety of languages, including English. (The English dub simply offers more English.) In an interesting reversal of the way these Asian releases usually end up sounding, the music on the English dub offers slight but noticeably less amplitude, while the dialogue is similarly just a tad louder than on the Mandarin track. Otherwise, both tracks sport great fidelity with nicely immersive effects bombarding the listener in the nonstop action sequences. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is very wide.

Switch Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• "Fate" Music Video (1080p; 5:13)


• "Switch" Main Theme Music Video (1080p; 4:48)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:38)


• Original Trailers (1080p; 4:19)

Switch Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Even the lowest common denominator among so-called popcorn movies typically have at least the semblance of narrative sense, but Switch evidently decided that a comprehensible plot was a low priority. That said, it ultimately doesn't end up mattering that much, for the film is so relentlessly in your face with nonstop action sequence and over the top characters that story elements become almost inconsequential. If Switch never makes any sense, it at least has the good sense to look and sound "mah-velous" in high definition, so for those who don't mind brainless action, this Blu- ray provides the goods in a perhaps unintentional way.