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Dom Robinson reviews
- Cat.no: DV 1015
- Cert: 18
- Running time: 89 minutes
- Year: 1993
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
- Chapters: 16 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- 16:9-enhanced: No
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 5
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : Scene index, Hong Kong Superstars Hall of Fame
Director:
- Toby Russell
Writer
- Toby Russell
Cinema of Vengeance,is an all-round look at martial arts films with profiles and clips of star interviews fromthe likes of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jimmy Wang Yu, Bruce Li, Chow Yun-Fat, Gary Daniels,Sammo Hung, Ti Lung, Liu Chia Hui and John Woo, occasionally giving up a wholechapter to their subject.
While Bruce Lee has passed on, Jackie Chan has now made a name for himself in Hollywoodwith recent films such as Rumble in the Bronx andRush Hour, gracing thesilver screen instead of going straight to video. Gary Daniels is still to make his name inthis country, but Sammo Hung’s Martial Law often gets an airing on Channel 5.Cynthia Rothrock also features as the first female Westerner to break into thebox-office world of martial arts films.
There’s a great number of film clips to illustrate the point whenever discussing a particularactor, but most of these are in a 4:3 pan-and-scan ratio.
The picture quality fares a bit better thanDeath By Misadventure.The interview clips are still blurry but at least not all of the film clips fall inthe same boat and there’s some nice carnage-creation as two-handed gun-toting madnesstakes precedence in some scenes.
Presented in a mostly fullscreen 4:3 ratio, the average bitrate is arespectable 8.5Mb/s.
The sound is Dolby Digital 2.0 which normally translates to Dolby Surround,but you’d be hard pushed to find much to excite your speakers here as it’sall interviews and muffled clips from films so may as well be mono.
Extras : Chapters :
16 chapters during the 89-minute feature, with one chapter per topic.Note that there’s 17 chapters on the disc and those marked 1-16 on the cardinside actually related to chapters 2-17, the first used for a logo.
Languages & Subtitles :English language, but only burnt-in subtitles when the dialogue requires. And there’s more… :But only one thing: The Hong Kong Superstars Hall of Fame which sounds like aset of actor biographies and filmographies, but is neither. It’s two pages showing ahandful of average, small pictures. Interesting to look at…for about two seconds.Best to have another visit downThe Internet Movie Database. Menu :Very basic, silent and static, with a picture of the front cover set against the options.m
Overall :Again, likeDeath By Misadventure,if you’re thinking of purchasing this, try to get it on rental first because thepicture and sound quality don’t excite too much.FILM : ***PICTURE QUALITY : **SOUND QUALITY: *EXTRAS: ½——————————-OVERALL: *½
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2000.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.