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Dom Robinson reviews

The Black Sheep Affair

Defeat is not an option...

Distributed by
Hong Kong Legends

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: Yes
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

Director:

The Blacksheep Affair

Producer:

Screenplay:

Alex Law and Roy Szeto

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 Affair adds 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 evil overlord.

Yem (Chiu Man Chuk), the subtitles for which give him the name Arthur!, goes over the top when attempting to overthrow a grounded plane full of terrorists. His bosses want him to steer clear, but he ignores them and ends up being transferred out to 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.

film pic

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 lifeless and doesn't have any steerage of sound effects that I could hear, so may as well be mono.

film pic

Chicks with guns!

Extras :

Chapters :

30 chapters for the 87-minute film - a perfect amount.

Languages & Subtitles :

Both Cantonese and English languages are available and, thankfully, we get subtitles that are not burned into the print. They can be turned off.

And there's more... :

The Music Promo is two minutes of the film's dramatic music to clips from the film, there's a Chiu Man Chuk interview lasting all of four minutes, and a Wu Shu showcase which shows the star prancing about doing martial arts for two minutes.

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

Menu :

Animated with sound, showing clips from the film. However, it's rather short, so repeats often - a bit like a bad curry.

film pic

Goodbye Helicopter

Overall, the film is nothing special. We've seen it all before where films include scenes of the enemy going mad locked up in his cell and in fact certain parts feel like 1991's Ricochet. Oh, and don't forget the obligatory love interest, Chan/Tammy - depending on whether you take the Cantonese or English version - (Sex and Zen 2's Qi Shu) having a 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!

I don't know if this was affected by the same blight put upon Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, that of being cropped from 2.35:1 to 16:9, but this doesn't appear to be the case here.

One point - I can understand cars exploding when blown up... but ming vases?!

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2000.

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