Rating:

Manufacturer: Dragon Dynasty

Running time: 107 min.

Movie Review

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Crime Story

Presentation

The menus are easy to navigate and should be no problem to get around for anyone. If a bit generic overall, at least the main one is nicely animated, and has music from the film playing. Speaking of generic, what's up with yet another cover for a Jackie Chan movie featuring him in that black T-shirt? And let's stop the whole auto-playing of trailers when the DVD starts trend, please.

The Movie

The actual film is presented solidly enough in anamorphic widescreen. The print seems to be the same one used for the Dimension release for a few years ago, so you will notice some wear and speckling, especially on larger HDTVs. But overall, this looks pretty good for a Hong Kong movie that's almost fifteen years old.

One area Dragon Dynasty really did improve on is the sound. The original Cantonese mono track is included and is fine enough, but the 5.1 remix sounds fantastic, and really brings the action scenes to life. The English dub (which was previously the only option available on the Dimension version) is also included, but do your ears a favor and skip it.

The subtitles (available in English, Captioned English, and Spanish) are easy to read and free of grammatical errors, but unfortunately, they seem to follow the English dub of the movie, rather than an accurate translation of the spoken Cantonese.

The Extras

Commentary with Kirk Wong and Bey Logan: Bey Logan seems to be Dragon Dynasty's regular guy for commenataries. He usually does a good job, but can sometimes come off as a bit dry and academic, so the pairing of him with Kirk Wong (the film's director) is a good move. Wong's English is quite good, and the pair seem to have a good rapport together, and this results in one of the better commentaries you're going to find on a Hong Kong movie. It's fun and informative, and definitely worth a listen if you're a fan of the film.

Interview with Kirk Wong: A seperate featurette with the director that clocks in at around a half-hour. It's great hearing one of the better Hong Kong directors speak frankly about the process, and specifically things like working with Jackie Chan. Some of the information presented here is the same from the commenatary, but this is still a very nice extra.

Interview with Teddy Chen: Screenwriters are kind of the red-headed stepchildren of Hong Kong cinema (many directors don't bother to use them, or will throw away what they've written on the day of shooting) so it was interesting to see one of them talking about his work. Unfortunately, the interview runs only about ten minutes and doesn't even really scratch the surface of the subject.

Deleted Scenes: Three short scenes that were cut from the final print are included, and after seeing them, you can probably see why. They don't really add much (if anything) to the movie. But it is nice that they're included, even if the audio/visual quality of them is very poor compared to the actual film.

Trailers: Includes this movie, Hard Boiled, and Police Story. It would have been nice to have the actual Hong Kong versions of the trailers as well, but the Dragon Dynasty ones are decent enough.