Based on the Chinese novel Tracks in the Snowy Forest by Qu Bo, Tsui Hark's latest film, The Taking of Tiger Mountain -- which has recently been released in North America by Well Go USA -- is a fine setpiece for the legendary director. The film's action scenes are full of polish and are appropriately explosively kinetic and surprisingly visceral and bloody, which lifts the picture from the doldrums that an overlong running time created to pad the film for Mainland audiences and a storyline tweaked to satisfy Mainland censorship standards brings forth.

The story is loosely based on historical events in 1946, when China was in the midst of a civil war between the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Kuomintang (KMT). Taking advantage of the chaos are bands of bandits, with one of the largest led by Lord Hawk (played by Tony Leung Ka-Fai). Hawk has been backed by the KMT to wipe out all of the PLA in a region, so one group hatches a bold plan to take out Lord Hawk's fortress at Tiger Mountain from within.

Hark's script (which was co-written with three other people) is a bit too dense and convoluted for its' own good, with a good numbers of the characters introduced coming off in the end as feeling underwritten or dropped altogther. In particular, the modern-day bookends seem like superfluous fluff only placed in the narrative to try and hook in younger viewers by shoehorning in a role for actor/pop star Han Geng.

But no one can doubt Hark's prowess when it comes to producing action scenes, and the master director is in top form here. Some of the action shot for 3D screenings doesn't translate quite as well to 2D home viewing (e.g., there's lots of shots of stuff flaying at the screen) but for the most part, the action scenes are really great stuff, with the highlight being an encounter between one of the soldiers and a tiger. The tiger is not real, but Hark's prowess makes the viewer believe -- even for a second -- that it is actually real and there is some danger, and that is the sort of movie magic that only he and a select few other directors from anywhere in the world can conjure up.

RATING: 7

Well Go USA's release of the film is in 2D only, but is otherwise uncut and in the original Mandarin language. Bonus features on the DVD and Blu-ray versions include trailers for the movie and several other Well Go releases, and approximately twenty-one minutes of interviews with the cast and crew. The Blu-ray and DVD are available from Amazon, who are also offering the movie on their VOD service.