poster


Rating:


Movie Review

Video Clip

DVD Reviews

Main Page


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

Supercop


picture    picture

Presentation

Ai ya! It's the return of the dreaded Jackie Chan black t-shirt of death. In case you don't get the reference, there was a slew of Jackie Chan movies released in the US that had him seemingly wearing the same outfit on the cover. Combined with a picture of Michelle Yeoh that is obviously not from the movie, the packaging comes off as something for one of those janky gray market bootlegs, not for an "ultimate edition" of one of his best films.

Once you do pop in the DVD, like Dragon Dynasty's other releases, you'll be "treated" to trailers that automatically play, though there are only two of them this time, and they can thankfully be skipped through. The menus are actually some of the better ones Dragon Dynasty has done; there's an animated world map that highlights the various countries where the action takes place and shows a few quick clips of the local action. It's a neat little bit that adds a nice touch of class to the DVD.


The Movie

Well, let's get the bad news out of the way first. This is the same cut of Supercop that was presented on the previous official US version, which was released by Dimension. This means it's missing about ten minutes of footage from the Hong Kong version (information about the cuts can be found in our review of the movie here). Dimension's excuse why their DVD didn't have the full version of the movie was that they didn't have the Chinese language rights.

But as this version has a Chinese language track, that excuse doesn't fly here. One has to think that Dragon Dynasty, who are owned by The Weinstein Company, the same people that previously ran Dimension, were just simply either too cheap to buy the full rights to the movie, or too lazy to put together a truly complete "ultimate edition". Either way, it's disappointing that Dragon Dynasty, a company that once seemed committed to bringing out the best and most complete versions of Hong Kong movies to the US, seems to be resting on their laurels.

On the other side of the coin, Supercop has never looked or sounded better. The new re-mastering makes a very noticeable difference in the picture department, with an end product that is much more colorful and sharper than the Dimension version, and really worlds above any version released via a Hong Kong company.

picture

Dragon Dynasty

picture

Dimension

The Cantonese soundtrack is also well-done, even if it is only in mono. As for the subtitles, I can't vouch that they're 100% accurate, but they're certainly much better than the poorly-translated subs on the Hong Kong version, and they're not "dubtitles" like on some other Dragon Dynasty releases.

The English dub, which is available in DTS or Dolby 5.1, has lots of nice surround and bass effects. But if you've already seen the Dimension version, then you know what to expect out of this track. Besides Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh, who did their own dubbing, it sounds fairly awful, and the changes in the dialogue will cause viewers to miss out on some of the jokes. Also, much of the score has been changed, putting in stuff like Warren G in place of the original music.


picture    picture

The Extras

Commentary with Bey Logan: Logan's commentary's are usually take-it-or-leave it affairs. As Supercop is one of my favorite Jackie Chan movies, I did enjoy Logan highlighting locations where the movie was shot, or pointing out particular stuntmen that were used in a given scene. Others might find this sort of stuff very dry though, so your particular mileage may vary.

But it seems odd that neither Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, or director Stanley Tong -- all of whom can speak English -- were tapped to appear on the commentary. As has been pointed out in other Dragon Dynasty DVD reviews featured on this site, Bey Logan does a decent enough job with commentaries on his own, but is usually much better when he has someone else in the studio with him to bounce stuff off on.

Interviews: The second disc consists of a series of interviews with Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, Stanley Tong, and Ken Lo (Jackie's bodyguard and an actor that appears in some of his films). Each of them run around twenty minutes and, while they don't offer anything earth-shattering, are fun enough to watch.

Of particular note is a bit on the Jackie Chan interview where he seems legitimately pissed off about the cuts made in the US version. Bey Logan also takes great pains during the commentary to point out where the cuts happened, but no explanation is given as to why the original version of the film isn't present here.

One would hope that it was something beyond Dragon Dynasty's control, and this sort of thing isn't an example of what's to come from them. This version of Supercop is still worth picking up if you're a fan of the film, but it's more than a bit disappointing when you consider how much better it could have been if there would have been a little more time and effort put into it.