7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Realizing that he will be defeated in no time during a police showdown, a thug shoots himself to force the cops to cease fire and take him to the hospital. In the hospital, he claims human rights to refuse immediate treatment in order to bide time for his underlings to rescue him. The detective in charge sees through his scheme but decides to play along so as to capture his whole gang once and for all.
Starring: Louis Koo, Wei Zhao, Wallace Chung, Yuanyuan Gao, Suet LamForeign | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Cantonese: DTS:X
Cantonese: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
Cantonese: Dolby Digital 2.0
English, Cantonese
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Years ago when my wife and I were still dating she was going through my stacks of VHS tapes (which might give an indication of how long ago this was) and found the 1937 Alexander Korda epic Elephant Boy (available on DVD as part of Criterion’s Eclipse Series 30: Sabu!). “What’s this?” she asked innocently, to which I, ever in search of an easy punch line, responded, “It’s the prequel to The Elephant Man.” I’m maybe just a little chagrined to admit she believed me, this despite the fact that the VHS cover clearly had Sabu riding an elephant on it. In the same vein, I guess some wag might joke that Three was an early draft of 8½ (or its musical version Nine), but this numerically titled film is in fact a rather odd portrait of, yes, three characters bound together in the unlikely setting of a hospital emergency room. (Ironically, though, director Johnny To’s last film before this one was a musical, the 3D extravaganza Office, which beat critical darling La La Land to the “reinventing the musical for the modern age” sweepstakes by quite some time.) Three posits a no nonsense neurological surgeon named Tong Qian (Vicki Zhao) who gets into a bit of a turf war on her home territory when a notorious criminal named Shun (Wallace Chung) is brought in with a serious head wound after a police interrogation goes horribly wrong. Keeping track of Shun is policeman Ken (Louis Koo), who is pretty sure Shun is up to no good despite his injury and who butts heads with both the bad guy and the good doctor in his attempts to keep everything under control.
Three is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Shot with Arri Alexa XT Plus cameras and finished at a 2K DI (according to the IMDb), Three has a nicely sharp and well detailed image, something that's helped by the fact that most of the proceedings take place under the harsh (but bright) lighting of the hospital environment. While a few scenes have just slightly less fulsome shadow detail, by and large this is a presentation that offers excellent and consistent levels of fine detail (to the point that some of the surgery scenes may be a little stomach churning for some). Some scenes are either lit or graded toward blue tones, but generally speaking the palette looks natural and untoyed with. Aside from some almost imperceptible banding that occurs momentarily in some abrupt segues, there are no issues distracting from an excellent video presentation.
Three features a really effective DTS:X track (DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 core) in the original Cantonese. While the bulk of the really impressive activity comes late in the film during the big shootout, there is consistent spatial presence for all the "high tech" noises of the emergency room, as well as impressive directionality when, for example, a patient calls out from across the room and the camera is focusing on a character at the forefront of the frame. Good panning effects attend some of the rapid fire scenes where patients are wheeled in and out of this or that location, and of course once the gunfire starts erupting, there's some significant use of LFE. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly with excellent prioritization.
- Master Director Johnnie To (1080i; 2:30) is a brief look at the director on the job interspersed with equally brief interviews.
- Three Complex Characters (1080i; 3:12) is a similarly brief EPK devoted to the three main characters.
Three is a film with a relatively unusual setting and a trio of really interesting characters. Perhaps surprisingly, the film attains a high level of tension early on, despite the fact that it's obvious that everything is heading toward a calamitous showdown. Technical merits are strong, and Three comes Highly recommended.
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