The Black Sheep Affair

• Cert:
• Cat.no: MDV 359
• Running time: 87 minutes
• Year: 1998
• Pressing: 2000
• Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
• Chapters: 30 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround)
• Languages: Cantonese, English (dubbed)
• Subtitles: English
• Widescreen: 1.85:1
• 16:9-enhanced: No
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 9
• Price: £19.99
• Extras : Scene index, Music Promo, Chiu Man Chuk interview, Biogs/Filmogs,Photo gallery, Wu Shu showcase
  

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  Director:

  Allun Lam

  (The Blacksheep Affair)

Producer:

Screenplay:

Music:

Cast:

Yem Dong: Chiu Man Chuk
Chan Pun: Qi Shu
Hung Wai-Kwok: Ken Wong
Keizo Mishima: Andrew Lin
Captain Kiang: Xin Xin Xiong

The Blacksheep Affairadds weight to the fact that most martial arts films hardly have complex plots.For reasons too pointless to explain, the film teams up two blokes against one eviloverlord.

Yem (Chiu Man Chuk), the subtitles for which give him the name Arthur!, goesover the top when attempting to overthrow a grounded plane full of terrorists. Hisbosses want him to steer clear, but he ignores them and ends up being transferred outto Lavernia, even though he’s sorted out the problem for them.

He fights bad guy Mishima (Andrew Lin), tracking him down from place to place,culminating in a final unarmed combat fight in which only one man will survive.

Even the ming vases couldn’t be saved!

Presented in an anamorphic 1.85:1 ratio, the print doesn’t appear to have any artifacts,but it’s not particularly full of life and looks a bit soft most of the time.The average bitrate is a steady 6.72Mb/s.

The sound is presumably plain Dolby Surround (Dolby Digital 2.0) but is equally lifelessand doesn’t have any steerage of sound effects that I could hear, so may as well be mono.

Chicks with guns!

The problems come with the Biogs/Filmogs for Chuk and Qi Shu and the Photogallery. On a DVD-ROM player, the DVD lets you look at the first screen of each, but skipsthe rest (!)

Menu :Animated with sound, showing clips from the film. However, it’s rather short, so repeatsoften – a bit like a bad curry.

Goodbye Helicopter

Overall, the film is nothing special. We’ve seen it all before where films includescenes of the enemy going mad locked up in his cell and in fact certain parts feellike 1991’s Ricochet. Oh, and don’t forget the obligatory love interest, Chan/Tammy- depending on whether you take the Cantonese or English version – (Qi Shu) havinga gun pointed at her for effect and while some hostages take just one shot to kill them,others take hundreds and they’re still alive!