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For more information, including a trailer, or to buy the DVD, please visit the official Dragon Dynasty site.

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Presentation

The artwork and one of the review blurbs on the cover are kind of misleading; it might make you think this is a Woo-style gun-fu flick. But other than that, the packaging is fine. In fact, I like the cover here better than that of the Hong Kong version.

Once again, I must harp on the annoying practice of Dragon Dynasty not only putting a bunch of logo screens on before you can get to the main menu, but several trailers as well. Maybe one day they'll realize that most people just want to get staright to the movie.

As for the menus, they're nothing to write about, but get the job done.


The Movie

Dragon Dynasty's version has been noticeably cleaned up from the Hong Kong version, which was put out by Mei Ah. The picture is a lot sharper here, with much better color saturation. Unfortunately, there is some pixellation present during some of the darker scenes, but it's not bad enough to be totally distracting.

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Dragon Dynasty

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Mei Ah

Mei Ah's version already had very solid sound, so there hasn't been any change in that area, except for the addition of a English dub track. The dub is done competently enough, but, of course, you'll probably want to stick with the original audio. The subtitles are clean, easy to read, and free of grammatical errors.


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The Extras

Commentary with Bey Logan: Dragon Dynasty regular Logan returns with another solid commentary. Logan gives particular attention to the locations where the film was made, as well as highlighting some of the more obscure actors featured in the movie. Overall, this is a good commentary, but I'm getting a bit tired of hearing Logan on (seemingly) every Dragon Dynasty release.

Interviews: The meat of the extras portion is contained here, with some fairly in-depth interviews with Johnnie To, Simon Yam, and Maggie Siu. All of them are interesting in their own way, perhaps most notably Maggie Siu's, since Hong Kong actresses rarely talk candidly about the film-making process. This is the kind of stuff that Dragon Dynasty really seems to do well on their discs, and these are definitely worth checking out.

Trailers: Like most of Dragon Dynasty's other discs, this section contains both their and the original version of the trailer. The trailers shown at the beginning of the disc are not included here.