- Actors: Yun-Fat Chow, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh, Kong Chu, Kenneth Tsang
- Directors: John Woo
- Writers: John Woo
- Producers: Hark Tsui
- Format: Colour, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
- Language Cantonese Chinese
- Subtitles: English, Spanish
- Region: Region 1 (US and Canada DVD formats.)
- Number of discs: 2
- Classification: Unrated (US MPAA rating. See details.)
- Studio: Weinstein Company
- DVD Release Date: 30 Mar 2010
- Run Time: 111 minutes
- Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- ASIN: B0036BDQBU
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 85,201 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Blu-ray
A very poor quality release taken from poor master I have over 12 versions of this film the definitive and best being the Criterion Laser Disc (3 Disc full CAV) at £150 a superb buy properly translated subtitles (not Mickey Mouse and Dumbo but Butthead etc) translated by bi-lingual experts from Hong Kong Gangster Slang to US Gangster Slang. The Transfer is in it's true ratio and the extras contain trailers for every John Woo film and a Chow Yun Fat Filmography if this is put on to DVD by Criterion buy it it is like watching the Gaumont Directors Cut of Leon (the Professional) at 22 minutes longer than the pathetic UK release which cuts out most of the backstory. Criterion understand Woo and employ translators who understand meanings other companies use the old Shaw Brothers style translations which if you look back to the Bruce Lee movies are absolutely dire. Watch this film in cantonese with the Criterion Translation subtitles and you will appreciate it so much more.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
35 reviews
174 of 193 people found the following review helpful
Absolute disaster; this release is an insult
24 Mar 2010
Format:Blu-ray
As any fan of this film knows, we've been waiting for the clichéd 'Holy Grail' for a long time. Every release on DVD has been plagued by horrible prints, remixed audio, cropped image, bad subtitle tracks, non anamorphic image and various sundry image issues. All of those problems have left nearly every DVD edition as coasters on your coffee table as they were painful to watch. No release, save the TF1 French DVD release (without English subtitles) has ever done John Woo's The Killer justice.
Here comes Dragon Dynasty, the unholy offspring of the Weinstein's buy up of distribution rights in the United States of nearly every Asian film. Well known for their Blu-Rays which are merely DVD upconverts (Hard Boiled on the PS3 game Stranglehold) or otherwise botched jobs like the burned out picture on Jackie Chan's Police Story, the butchered version of Supercop, interlacing instead of progressive on The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin etc.
After reading the Blu-Ray review on DVD Beaver and viewing the disc myself via a broken street release, it is easy to see that this disc is another Dragon Dynasty abomination. The disc is 1080i and suffers from visual artifacts that accompany a PAL source. The audio is NOT lossless and is instead compressed Dolby Digital 2.0 Cantonese and 5.1 English dub. The only redeeming feature is that coherent subtitle translation that seems to be sourced from a prior release in the United Kingdom. The extras are also sourced from elsewhere and are presented in Mandarin dub and are of dramatically lower visual quality.
Despite Dragon Dynasty's insistence this was a "Full HD" presentation and their boasting of its greatness on Twitter, it is nothing of the sort. It's another hackneyed release from the team at DD. While it may be "the best" when it comes to The Killer on home media, it is far from being worthy even as replacement for a VHS copy. While it may improve audio and visual wise on prior releases, it's like going from a Yugo car to a Fiat. Buying this Blu-Ray supports their lazy and disgraceful approach to these classic films.
Here comes Dragon Dynasty, the unholy offspring of the Weinstein's buy up of distribution rights in the United States of nearly every Asian film. Well known for their Blu-Rays which are merely DVD upconverts (Hard Boiled on the PS3 game Stranglehold) or otherwise botched jobs like the burned out picture on Jackie Chan's Police Story, the butchered version of Supercop, interlacing instead of progressive on The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin etc.
After reading the Blu-Ray review on DVD Beaver and viewing the disc myself via a broken street release, it is easy to see that this disc is another Dragon Dynasty abomination. The disc is 1080i and suffers from visual artifacts that accompany a PAL source. The audio is NOT lossless and is instead compressed Dolby Digital 2.0 Cantonese and 5.1 English dub. The only redeeming feature is that coherent subtitle translation that seems to be sourced from a prior release in the United Kingdom. The extras are also sourced from elsewhere and are presented in Mandarin dub and are of dramatically lower visual quality.
Despite Dragon Dynasty's insistence this was a "Full HD" presentation and their boasting of its greatness on Twitter, it is nothing of the sort. It's another hackneyed release from the team at DD. While it may be "the best" when it comes to The Killer on home media, it is far from being worthy even as replacement for a VHS copy. While it may improve audio and visual wise on prior releases, it's like going from a Yugo car to a Fiat. Buying this Blu-Ray supports their lazy and disgraceful approach to these classic films.
73 of 89 people found the following review helpful
DVDBeaver and [...] trashed this transfer
23 Mar 2010
Format:DVD
Just to counterbalance the hyperbolic 5 star "review"s which have absolutely no relevance to this Blu-ray Dragon Dynasty abomination:
From DVDBeaver:
"....a real disappointment.....hazy...moiring...does not look or sound very good at all....riddled with annoying artifacts...no lossless audio option...ridiculous English dub in 5.1 but original Cantonese in 2.0 channel...this interlaced transfer is unacceptable...extras all seem re-hashed".
From [...]:
"..wow, what a major disppointment...This is so far from high definition quality that aside from being anamorphically enhanced I can't really say much else recommends it...at times not even as sharp as a decently upconverted SD-DVD...Vivendi really needs to go back to the drawing board on these Dragon Dynasty releases, because the first two have been travesties from an image standpoint.."
I haven't previously sunk so low as to review a product I haven't seen myself but these two websites are consistantly reliable and I get so irritated by industry shills (A. Nani Moss - anonymous? Oh how hilarious you are) pushing their product disguised as "reviews". It was enough for me to cancel my pre-order anyway.
From DVDBeaver:
"....a real disappointment.....hazy...moiring...does not look or sound very good at all....riddled with annoying artifacts...no lossless audio option...ridiculous English dub in 5.1 but original Cantonese in 2.0 channel...this interlaced transfer is unacceptable...extras all seem re-hashed".
From [...]:
"..wow, what a major disppointment...This is so far from high definition quality that aside from being anamorphically enhanced I can't really say much else recommends it...at times not even as sharp as a decently upconverted SD-DVD...Vivendi really needs to go back to the drawing board on these Dragon Dynasty releases, because the first two have been travesties from an image standpoint.."
I haven't previously sunk so low as to review a product I haven't seen myself but these two websites are consistantly reliable and I get so irritated by industry shills (A. Nani Moss - anonymous? Oh how hilarious you are) pushing their product disguised as "reviews". It was enough for me to cancel my pre-order anyway.
54 of 66 people found the following review helpful
Check The Screen Shots at DVDBeaver
25 Mar 2010
Format:Blu-ray
I am about to cancel my pre-order of this Blu Ray release. Please check the screen grabs at DVDBeaver. The transfer is obviously INFERIOR to prior DVD releases. I was eagerly awaiting this title, but I am not going to throw away $20. This is a disgrace.
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