The Treasure Hunter Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

The Treasure Hunter Blu-ray Movie Review

The Temple of Not Domo.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 15, 2011

What would you get if you combined elements of Romancing the Stone, The Mummy, Indiana Jones and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider into a Taiwanese stir fry that also included copious martial arts sequences? Unfortunately a lot less than you might think, given the possibilities that those four films, and the new setting, might suggest. Director Yen-ping (AKA Kevin) Chu approaches this material with a decent amount of reverence—perhaps too much so—which clearly pays homage to several iconic past films but which also clearly lacks the inherent fun that made those films so manically enjoyable at times. It’s hard not to stoop to horribly low pun levels considering this film’s ultra-sandy desert setting, but The Treasure Hunter is frequently too dry for its own good. It’s like watching the faded reflection of action films of yore, one which has been scratched and damaged by years of environmental ruin and never fully reveals the luster which may have once been at its core. This is not to say that The Treasure Hunter doesn’t have some winning elements, for it certainly does, and in some ways it quite artfully reimagines the mummy genre in a wuxia setting. One of the film’s early set pieces has our hero Qiao Fei (acting-singing superstar Jay Chou, recently Kato in the Seth Green Green Hornet) taking on a mummy whose body wrapping unravels to repeatedly ensnare Qiao’s limbs. It’s a breathtakingly original interpretation of age-old mummy tropes, as innovative in its own way as several elements of Stephen Sommers’ Mummy reboot with Brendan Fraser was many years ago. But on the other side of the scale, The Treasure Hunter is (again, no pun intended) surprisingly lifeless, with Chou kind of sleepwalking through his role, and love interest Lan Ting (Red Cliff’s Lin Chi-ling) neither feisty nor seductive enough to create many romantic sparks. The film also suffers from trying to stuff too many referents into a storyline that attempts rather fitfully to evoke classic adventure-horror movies of the past while investing the proceedings with a decidedly arch neo-modern spin.

A lot of people seemed to love the first Kevin Chu-Jay Chou collaboration, Kung Fu Dunk, but I personally found it a less than spectacularly successful affair, despite some passably charming elements. Chu has an eye for staging great action sequences, as he proved quite capably in Kung Fu Dunk and continues here in The Treasure Hunter, but he just doesn’t seem to be able to corral his storylines or his characterizations. In these regards, The Treasure Hunter is even more (pun alert—so sorry) all over the map than Kung Fu Dunk is. Aside from the curiously unremarkable “chemistry” between Chou and Chi-ling, characters just kind of appear out of thin air (literally and figuratively), motivations are sparse and the story is convoluted and too filled with extraneous material to ever achieve much momentum.

Part of what made the Indiana Jones films, as well as Romancing the Stone, so enjoyable was the bickering camaraderie between the leading man and lady, and that’s nowhere to be found in The Treasure Hunter. It’s especially odd since Chu seems to be intentionally evoking Kathleen Turner’s writer cum adventuress character in Stone with the Chi-ling character here, a young writer of adventure books who gets swept up in an adventure of her own when her archeologist father is killed so that the bad guys can take possession of a map the elderly man has been protecting to a secret stash of treasure. Chou’s character’s involvement in all of this is only fitfully explained. He seems to be working for the father, returning purloined archeological treasures to their rightful owners, but how he is granted such magically exceptional powers is only passingly referred to in some of the film’s frankly annoying flashbacks, which become increasingly intrusive as the film wends towards its conclusion.

The film does a good deal better at least some of the time with some inventive special effects. It’s a lot of fun to see various warring entities suddenly spring out of sandy dunes (does Japan have a desert?), and while some of the CGI—notably the killer tornado that is obviously modeled on Sommers’ work on The Mummy reboot—is less than stellar, some of the effects, as with the Mummy himself and his ability to ensnare his enemies with his wrappings, are really rather artfully handled. The film unfortunately opts for too many buffoonish cartoon elements with regard to some of the bumbling bad guys, something that might have been okay had the entire film had more of an overall fun quotient. As it stands, The Treasure Hunter seems to be taking itself deadly seriously almost all of the time, which makes the intrusion of the not exactly ready for prime time comedic elements all the more jarring.

Chou has set Asian hearts on fire with both his music and his supposed acting, but his allure largely escapes this reviewer, especially in this film where he appears to be a catatonic surfer dude. Even stranger is Chi-ling’s dissociative quality, as if she really wasn’t quite sure what kind of film she was in and how to approach her character. Some of the supporting turns are a good deal better, albeit with characters that often come off as little more than living cartoons. The Treasure Hunter is really an example of a hugely wasted opportunity. Obviously Chu knew the kinds of films he wanted to emulate, but it’s apparent he didn’t quite have the knack of knowing exactly how to bring his vision to the screen.

The Treasure Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Treasure Hunter's AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1 is one of the most relentlessly yellow looking movies in recent memory. Virtually every scene is literally drenched in a golden-honey colored hue, so that when very occasionally we get something approaching normal filtering, it's like a breath of fresh air. Despite the virtually omnipresent monochromaticism, The Treasure Hunter boasts rather excellent fine detail, though with the yellow hues and contrast pushed to the breaking point a lot of the time, the effulgent glow around everything can at least seem to rob the image of some of its texture and finesse. When we do get some non-yellow segments, as in the early café scenes with Chi-ling, and, later, some nice, cool blue-lit nighttime scenes with Chou and Chi-ling, detail creeps up perceptibly. Black levels are generally quite strong throughout the feature, and while some the CGI is less than resplendent, overall those elements look at least acceptable if not overwhelmingly brilliant.

The Treasure Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Treasure Hunter is presented with two lossless audio options, the original Mandarin in Dolby TrueHD 2.0 and an English dub similarly in Dolby TrueHD 2.0. This is a film that is virtually screaming for a surround mix, what with its desert setting, windstorms, and huge action set pieces. But the 2.0 mixes are certainly fine as far as they go. It's more than obvious that huge swaths of the Mandarin track were post-looped, and though I'm not expert it's my opinion that at least some of this track is actually in Cantonese, for there are extremely noticeable differences between lip movements and what's actually being spoken quite a bit of the time. The English dub is certainly good enough, especially for those who can't stand reading subtitles, and as so often seems to be the case lately, it's mixed ever so slightly hotter than the original Mandarin track. Fidelity is extremely good across all frequency ranges, and there's some fun LFE in several special effects sequences, especially with regard to the cyclone and the thundering herds of horseman who erupt from the sandy dunes at various points in the film.

The Treasure Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Original Trailer (SD: 2:08)
• Previews of other FUNimation Releases

The Treasure Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

For those wondering what the frell my subtitle under the review title above refers to, "domo" is the Japanese word for "much," so, yes, the subtitle is one of the worst puns ever inflicted on readers of Blu-ray.com. The fact is, there's simply not much to recommend about The Treasure Hunter, despite an appealing enough premise and homages galore to any number of better films. Chu knows how to stage things quite effectively, but that's only part of a director's skill set. The story here is unfocused and ambling, and the performances never rise to the visceral (and fun) level they need to be to support a fantastic story like this one. This is easy on the eyes, to be sure, but it's curiously devoid of any brains or heart.