7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A gangster on the run sacrifices everything for his family and a woman he meets while on the lam.
Starring: Ge Hu, Lun-Mei Gwei, Fan Liao, Regina Wan, Jue HuangForeign | 100% |
Drama | 58% |
Crime | 7% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.90:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.90:1
Mandarin: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Mandarin: Dolby Digital 5.1
English, French, Mandarin (Simplified)
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
The Wild Goose Lake may traffic in some tropes of film noir, at least in style if not entirely in content, but it just as frequently defies any easy categorization. There’s really not a noble man led astray in this story, since the focal character of the piece is an unrepentant scooter thief named Zhou Zenon (Hu Ge). There’s similarly no real femme fatale in terms of some seductive woman leading an otherwise honorable hero to his doom, and this is not solely due to the fact that, as just mentioned, Zhou is not an honorable hero to begin with. Interestingly, there are actually two women at play in this tale detailing Zhou on the run both from the cops and other gang members. One of the women is Zhou’s estranged wife Shujan Wang (Regina Wan, billed in the film as Wan Qian). The other is actually the first female character to be properly introduced, though it takes a while to discover her character’s context and background. Instead, early scenes offer a chain smoking, seemingly very worried type named Aiai Liu (Gwei Lun-Mei, billed as Lun-Mei Kwei), who walks up to Zhou in an underground section of a train station where a torrential rain is pouring outside for the seemingly random reason to get a light for her cigarette, but who turns out to have been sent to meet Zhou.
The Wild Goose Lake is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Film Movement with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.90:1. The IMDb lists RED Cameras and a 2K DI as the relevant technical elements, and the result is a really nicely sharp and well detailed presentation on this Blu-ray. As can be seen in some of the screenshots accompanying this review, sequences in the film are sometimes drenched in sickly green-yellows or purples, and fine detail levels can understandably ebb and flow with some of these decisions, especially in some midrange framings. There are also significant portions of the film that play out at night, with little if any lighting around, and as such even general detail levels can vary. But despite some of these "built in" changes, the overall appearance here is often breathtakingly vivid, and in brightly lit outdoor scenes, as in some of the beach material, the palette pops extremely well and detail levels are excellent across the board. There is one kind of strange anomaly that looked a bit odd to me, with regard to the texture of the fabric of a kind of pink or purplish sweater Aiai wears (see screenshot 3). I'm not sure why, but there was a weird kind of shimmering or rippling effect I spotted a couple of times on this particular piece of clothing.
The Wild Goose Lake features a nicely expansive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track in Mandarin. A couple of the set pieces, as in the competition between the motorcycle thief gangs, offer some great panning effects, and the relentless rain that accompanies several key sequences also offer good engagement of the side and rear channels for ambient environmental effects. A glut of outdoor material offers a wide range of realistic sounds from rustling breezes to the lap of water hitting the sand at a beach. Some of the most visceral sound effects are the sudden eruptions of gunfire that populate the first part of the film in particular. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout this problem free presentation.
There's a kind of interesting aspect to The Wild Goose Lake above and beyond its inherent qualities, a "little" data point which may cause some potential viewer eyebrows to raise: it's set in and around Wuhan, which is of course constantly in the news these days. This was obviously filmed before the outbreak of Covid-19, but the region seems to offer both bustling urban environments and some more rural, sylvan enclaves (the word "enclave" is actually used by a policeman at one point). The locale isn't really germane to the plot, but it gives this piece a little added kick, adding to a story that is probably bit too convoluted for its own good but which is presented with a fair amount of style and flourish. Technical merits are solid, and The Wild Goose Lake comes Recommended.
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