The Viral Factor Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

The Viral Factor Blu-ray Movie Review

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Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 25, 2012

There’s quite a span of years between my eldest siblings and myself, so much so that there are definite “generational” differences between us. My oldest sister, for example, was in the age group that was among the first test subject for the polio vaccine discovered by Jonas Salk. Few remember the back story nowadays, but evidently at the time the Salk vaccine was hugely controversial, at least for a little while, because literally millions of schoolchildren (including my sister) were part of the “field trials”, before anyone really knew how efficacious (or, alternatively, dangerous) the vaccine might be. But my mother, a registered nurse who had seen the horrors of polio professionally, weighed the risks and decided that it was best to go ahead with the experiment. (On a much less serious level, my mother spent months trying to get me to come down with the measles when I was a little boy, having me drink from the same water glass as several of my friends who had the disease. Alas, I had some sort of built in autoimmunity and have never had measles to this day.) Though polio has reemerged rather unexpectedly in a few isolated cases over the past several years, it remains one of the crowning success stories of 20th century medicine in terms of a once virulent scourge brought to its figurative knees through the miracle of modern science. Another supposed major success story in the eradication of a once much feared disease is the case of smallpox, which the World Health Organization announced had been wiped from the face of the earth in 1979. The Viral Factor imagines what might happen should a scientist develop a mutated form of the disease and then hold the world hostage with the threat of its release should his demands not be met. In fact, the scientist’s demands are rather quickly acceded to in this new Dante Lam thriller, to the point where the scientist is pretty much out of the picture by the time the credits stop rolling at around the fifteen minute mark. What has ensued is the start of an international conspiracy to wrest control of the virus for (of course) nefarious ends, in a sort of Bourne-esque approach that sees a mortally wounded operative trying to save the day over vast expanses of territory.

Is Dante Lam the new John Woo? Lam has increasingly built his career on viscerally exciting action flicks, and The Viral Factor fits into that mold quite neatly, at least for the most part. The film has one huge set piece after another, including several remarkable car chases and (just for good measure) one helicopter chase. The fight sequences simply erupt out of scenes willy-nilly at times, as if Lam and co-scenarist Jack Ng simply decided it was time for a little mayhem, whether or not it makes much sense. But while Lam has Woo’s sense of the over the top action, there’s something not quite right in some of The Viral Factor in terms of pacing. It’s an odd, discordant feeling that makes the film feel strangely disjointed when the action set pieces should be more free flowing.

In terms of story, the film has a good enough set up, with a cop, Jon (Jay Chou), who is going to die from a bullet lodged in his head after an ambush goes horribly awry, attempting to find his long lost brother, whom his mother has just revealed exists. Jon’s wound has come in the film’s prelude, where the smallpox virus creating scientist had attempted to gain asylum for himself and his family. It turns out that Jon’s long lost brother, Yeung (Nicholas Tse), is a wanted criminal who is part of the smallpox virus conspiracy. It’s at this point that The Viral Factor lapses into such sheer ridiculousness that it becomes more of a comic book than a realistic action thriller. There are too many “coincidental” intersection strands here that simply strain credulity to the breaking point.

The film is also almost funny at times with how repeatedly it places various females (including a little girl, Yeung’s young daughter) in harm’s way, including a couple of just out there car crashes. Some cynical types might begin to wonder if Lam has a stake in a car providing service, what with the huge number of smashed vehicles that dot the landscape of this film. The damsels (and nice shiny autos) in distress syndrome gets to be a little old hat not very far into the film, but in a couple of cases it at least provides the set up for some viscerally exciting fight sequences.

The Viral Factor would have played better had it been cut by at least twenty minutes or so, and if the overly melodramatic reunion between Yeung and Jon been divorced somehow from the smallpox plot, which is intensely hyperbolic in and of itself. A film that depends on this many dominoes simply falling so neatly into place is either too haphazardly plotted or, conversely, too meticulously thought out, and neither option is very good in developing a realistic baseline for a thriller like this to build upon. Still, Lam has an eye for exciting action, and the film’s climax is a knock down, drag out fight that includes everything from a little girl floating precariously in the ocean in a hazardous waste bag to a criminal getting his head about clanged off when it collides with one of those heavy metal anchor posts on a container ship. The film’s heartstring tugging finale seems like an empty gesture toward offering something relatively human after what has largely been an exciting, if flawed, cartoon.

The Viral Factor Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Viral Factor is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Lam has an eye for action and while the bulk of this film takes place in Malaysia, he and cinematographer Kenny Tse span the globe in setting up the story and then occasionally touching on other locales as various subplots enter the fray, and those all help to make the film an eye popping treat. As is typical these days, the DI has been tweaked and color graded at times, with a slate blue ambience in cityscapes and a gritty, low contrast look in several darker scenes, though generally speaking we get a relatively "normal" looking color scale which is nicely saturated and very robust. Fine object detail is outstanding most of the time, with an exceptionally sharp and clear image. There are some very minor artifacting issues to confront in this transfer, however, including some minor stability issues in several of the urban sequences, and perhaps most noticeably, motion judder in several pans that almost make the image look like an earthquake is occurring. Otherwise, though, this is a very nice looking high definition presentation that is augmented by the film's excellent use of locations.

The Viral Factor Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Viral Factor's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is available both in the original Cantonese and in a fairly laughable English dub, which is only recommended if you absolutely can't stand to read subtitles. The mix here is incredibly aggressive, with bombastic LFE and some exciting and thunderous sound effects which are very smartly placed throughout the surrounds. The film gets off to a blistering start with a showdown which of course devolves into a firefight, and everything from gigantic car crashes to nonstop gunfire is delivered with acuity and razor sharp fidelity. Dialogue almost takes a back seat in this film, which may not be a bad thing considering some of the less than sterling interchanges, but all the spoken elements are clearly and cleanly delivered. (It should be noted that even in the Cantonese track, several of the characters—including some of the Chinese themselves—speak English.) The mix is extremely potent, well prioritized, and delivers extremely wide dynamic range.

The Viral Factor Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making Of (SD; 14:40) provides some good background on the shooting of the film, including a wealth of footage from the Malaysia location sequences.


• Cast and Crew Interviews includes interviews with Director Dante Lam (SD; 9:59), who describes why the film's title in Chinese is Uphill Battle; Nicholas Tse (SD; 9:55 -, who talks about the background of his character; and Jay Chou (SD; 14:53), who does similar duty with his character.


• Trailer (SD; 1:13)

The Viral Factor Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Viral Factor is almost ludicrously overheated, it fails to make sense on more than one occasion, and it attempts to stuff some melodramatic family dynamics into what really should be just a straight ahead actioner. But you know what? None of that really matters all that much because Dante Lam keeps things moving along at such a breakneck pace that few are going to notice or, if they do, care very much. The long separated brothers now reunited to save the world from apocalypse trope is certainly nothing new, and The Viral Factor doesn't do anything even remotely innovative with it, but the film has so many great action set pieces that it's easy to forgive the pat way those set pieces are arrived at. The Viral Factor is far from perfect, but it's never, ever boring. With great video and reference quality audio, this release comes Recommended.