Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale Blu-ray Movie Review

Even at 2 1/2 hours, this isn't the whole story.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 28, 2012

Update as of 8/2/12: the review of the longer International Version of Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale has been posted.

Note: This review is for the so-called Domestic American Version of Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale. This is an edited version of the original two part film. The original two part version is being released as an International Version on Blu-ray, replete with additional supplemental features (not to mention around an hour and a half of extra running time).

China has had a world of problems with its outlying territories, with Hong Kong and Taiwan both creating different sort of headaches for the massive nation at various times throughout its history. If the current Communist Chinese regime is still coming to grips with the rampant capitalism that is a major legacy of the century long British rule of Hong Kong, the Communist Party itself is wrapped up in the history of Taiwan even more strongly in a way, as it was to Taiwan (or Formosa as it was often called) that the anti-Communist forces fled once Mao came to power. The struggle between Taiwan and Mainland China was a decades long political ping pong match (so to speak), and it became increasingly absurd in a way that many Western nations (the United States among them) continued to recognize only Taiwan and not Mainland China, despite the fact that the population of China itself so completely dwarfed that of Taiwan as to make any comparison between the two “nations” ludicrous on its face. But Taiwan had another skirmish on the international stage a generation or more before Mao and his rebels sought to remake China in their own image, and few if any Westerners are overly familiar with this chapter. Many Westerners will know that Japan and China had a tempestuous relationship throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, with several skirmishes and a couple of outright wars with each other, but probably few other than specialists are aware that Taiwan was actually ceded to the Japanese in the late 19th century and the Japanese then ruled over the island for several ensuing decades. Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale is a massive 2011 Taiwanese epic that takes several real life people and events surrounding the Japanese occupation of Taiwan and gussies them up into a spectacular piece of nationalist propaganda, one that is sure to make Chinese hearts beat with pride, but which may leave Westerners feeling at least a little more conflicted about it all.

Seediq refers to an indigenous aboriginal tribe that has populated Taiwan for untold centuries, though the people has had a rough time establishing their bona fides, as it were, only receiving official Chinese recognition as an indigenous group as late as 2008. Seediq bale might be loosely translated, as it is in the film, as “real man” or “true man” in the sense that it refers to an individual who fulfills his potential in an almost moralistic sense. The hero of Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale is Mona Rudao (played by Da-Ching as a young man and Lin Ching-Tai as an older man). (It should be noted that Mona’s name is transliterated Mouna Rudo in the film’s subtitles, but virtually all other online sources transliterate it as Mona Rudao, so that is the form that will be utilized in this review.) Mona is a highly respected warrior of his clan, and the film establishes him as a “take no prisoners” combatant in a visceral opening scene where he kills several rival tribesmen before making off with a boar the tribesmen have killed. (The film was produced by action master John Woo and several of the action sequences approach the manic intensity of Woo outings.)

The basic plot of Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale deals with the so-called Wushe Incident, which was the last in a long series of skirmishes between the aboriginal Taiwanese and their Japanese overlords. This edited Domestic Version of the film does spend about a half hour or so setting up the back story of the conflict, letting us see Mona as a young warrior in his tribal element, and then gets into the Japanese occupation and increasing encroachment on tribal lands. The Seediq people are basically consigned to a life of forced servitude and they are perhaps most disturbingly forbidden to practice their tribal customs. Mona manages to coax a number of other clans with whom he's normally involved in internecine warfare to band together to fight the Japanese, and against all odds, the natives are successful, at least at the beginning of their conflict.

Except here is exactly where a lot of Westerners are going to pause for a moment and say, “Well, that’s actually a good thing.” For the Seediq are not exactly “noble savages”, something that rather strangely the film doesn’t even attempt to portray them as. The Seediq are a vicious clan that engage in what seems to be the island’s favorite “sport”, namely decapitating one’s enemies. This head hunting was evidently one of the most abhorrent things that the Japanese invaders tried (successfully) to stop, and for Western audiences at least, most people are going to side with the Japanese. Even beyond this singular phenomenon, though, the Seediq are shown to be stubborn, uncompromising and rather brutally insensitive, even to their own children, and it casts the supposed “good guys” of the film in a decidedly peculiar light.

While the pull quote on the front of this Blu-ray compares Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale to both Braveheart and Last of the Mohicans, a more apt comparison might in fact be to Apocalypto, for we are witnessing the death of a culture, and a primitive tribal one at that. Director Wei Te-Sheng occasionally lapses into self-parody, with at least some depictions of the Japanese that verge on the two dimensional, and with too literal references to the “rainbow bridge” that a properly murderous warrior is expected to cross over if he fulfills his earthly duties appropriately, but the film is overall remarkably well balanced and modulated. This edited version lurches a time or two, with quick narrative shifts that aren’t especially well developed or explained, but the film still manages to cartwheel to a devastatingly tragic conclusion that will probably have most viewers feeling a real sense of regret, no matter what the obvious failings of both the Seediq and the Japanese.

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.34:1. This is a huge, expansive film that glories in the jungles of Taiwan and it retains a suitably lush, even spectacular, look in this high definition presentation. The DI has been tweaked in post per the usual contemporary practice, with lots of color grading and filtering that alternately cast warm golden or cool blue hues on entire segments. Fine object detail is extremely sharp and pleasing and fine grain levels are also consistent. The one recurrent problem in this transfer is unsightly flicker and instability in many of the jungle scenes. It's quite normal for some reason that many transfers just can't quite seem to handle heavy foliage very well, with a resultant breakdown in resolution, but in this case the entire frame flickers rather badly in several sequences. The only other niggling process is some less than consistent CGI, including several rainbows that arch across the sky and look like they were ported in from some ancient Hanna-Barbera enterprise.

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Though both the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and standard Dolby Digital 2.0 mixes included on Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale are labeled with the generic "Chinese" (not even Mandarin or Cantonese), some cursory research seems to indicate that the actual languages being spoken in the film are the native Seediq tongue and Japanese. Since I am certainly no expert in Eastern languages, I have set the specs above to mirror what the labeling on the disc states. One way or the other, the 5.1 sound mix here is unusually impressive, with beautifully nuanced ambient environmental sounds creating a near continual sense of immersion (sometimes literally, when the camera delves beneath the water). The battle scenes are appropriately bombastic, and rather interestingly we get a variety of nice foley effects, from gunshots to the slice and dice of heads being removed from bodies. Dialogue is clear and well prioritized. The very Western sounding score, which some may find anachronistic but which I personally found quite moving at times, also spills into the surrounds during virtually every cue. Dynamic range is exceedingly wide.

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making Of (1080i; 6:05) presents some brief background on the piece, especially for those who aren't very well acquainted with the history of Japan and Taiwan. Writer-Director Wei Te-Sheng and Producer John Woo are interviewed.


• Behind the Scenes (1080i; 22:41) has a nice selection of scenes being set up and shot, including some of the practical effects that dot the film.


• Make-Up and Visual Effects (1080i; 2:02) is a brief look at the fabrication of some of the decapitated heads that are a feature of the film.


• Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2:03)


• International Trailer (HD; 2:05)

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale isn't especially grisly (a lot of the beheadings and other violence is only hinted at, though we do get quite a few shots of skulls and, in one sequence, actual heads), but its tone is kind of disturbing nonetheless. It's hard to really root for a tribe that is so intent on murdering other tribesmen even before the Japanese enter the picture, and the self immolation of another group in the film leaves their parenting skills in serious question (no matter how noble their supposed intentions). But putting those very real qualms aside, this is an absolutely fascinating epic that details a page out of Chinese-Japanese history that evidently even a lot of Easterners aren't that familiar with. Director Wei Te-Sheng has made a gigantic film here which has some breathtakingly gorgeous shots mixed in with an overall feeling of absolute brutality. It makes for a somewhat odd mix, something that is perhaps exacerbated by this edited version's quick cuts (no pun intended). Personally, I can't wait to watch the International Version to see what I've missed, but in the meantime even in this truncated version, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale comes Recommended.