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Dom Robinson reviews
- Cert:
- Cat.no: DV 1036
- Running time: 109 minutes
- Year: 1999
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
- Chapters: 12 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: Cantonese, English
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 2.35:1
- 16:9-enhanced: No
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: 1 * DVD 9,1 * DVD 5
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Hong Kong trailer, US trailer, Music video, Making Of Featurette, Cast Biographies/Filmographies, Official Production Stills Gallery
Director:
- Andrew Lau
(Born to Be King, The Duel, Legend of the Fist Master, Love at First Sight, A Man Called Hero, Young and Dangerous 1-5)
Producer:
- Manfred Wong
Screenplay:
- Manfred Wong
Cast:
- Hero Hua: Ekin Cheng
Mu: Qi Shu
Jade: Kristy Yang
Sword Hua: Nicholas Tse
Boss: Biao Yuen
Invincible: Francis Ng
The star and director of Young and Dangerous 2, as well as the rest of the series, team up again with The Blacksheep Affair‘s Qi Shu in a film about A Man Called Hero, with Ekin Cheng in the title role, based on the comic book series by Ma Wing Shing.
Life can be a bummer sometimes and none more so if it’s 1914 and your family has just been slaughtered, which sets the basis as the plot for yet another martial arts slap-bang tale of revenge which does have a couple of top-notch fight scenes including the final one atop the Statue of Liberty but the rest are few and far between and ones we’ve seen all too often.
If you like a bit of nonsense you’ll probably quite enjoy this when it gets going but a lot of the time the camera shots and movements are a bit cheesy like watching the FMV sequence of a Playstation 2 game.
Now the question of how to make an acceptable transfer for a martial arts film. It must be in the original widescreen ratio – not cropped to 16:9 from a 2.35:1 master, like Hong Kong Classics’ recent City Hunter and Armour of God – and an anamorphic transfer.
This fails on the latter but at least we do get a 2.35:1 ratio for the original Cantonese language, with a print that suffers from being quite blurry when there’s movement and if you select the English subtitles, these are bizarrely placed UNDER the 16:9 centre image so you have to raise the picture on screen if your TV has that facility.
If you want to watch the film with an English dialogue, your only picture options are to view a dreadful 4:3 pan-and-scan transfer. Why on earth can’t we see the widescreen version with an alternate English soundtrack, especially when full use is made of the width? And why bother with the fullscreen version anyway since that could have been ditched and the extras placed on the disc instead, thus negating the need for a 2-disc release. And to whoever did the English translation, how did the year “1914 A.D.” become “1913” (?)
What is extremely odd is how the widescreen version is seven minutes shorter than the fullscreen and I’d read somewhere it’s been edited for violence which must be extremely off-putting to potential purchasers of this title and the fullscreen version is just plain unwatchable due to the fact that you can’t see what’s going on most of the time!
The average bitrate for the widescreen version is 5.10Mb/s, briefly peaking over 6Mb/s, while that for the fullscreen version is 4.80Mb/s, briefly getting close to 6Mb/s.
Dialogue for both languages is in Dolby Digital 5.1 with some nice split-surround effects in fight scenes including the one set in dark streets 50 minutes into the film. When people are behaving themselves, though, there’s nothing to get excited about.
For a 2-disc set there certainly isn’t a single disc’s worth of extras on the second one. First up is a 3-minute widescreen Hong Kong trailer and 3-minute widescreen US trailer. The 2-minute Music video puts music from the film to clips.
Also included is an 18-minute Making Of Featurette which combines the usual of cast and crew interviews (with burned-in subtitles) and film clips. The Cast Biographies/Filmographies cover all the principal cast members and director Andrew Lau. Finally, the Official Production Stills Gallery contains a mere 9 pictures.
Either version of the film has only 12 chapters and English subtitles are only available during the Cantonese version. The menus are animated but silent.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
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.