Project A (US version)
Manufacturer: Dimension
Price: $25
Sound: Dolby 5.1
Format: widescreen
Languages: English
Subtitles: English
Extras: trailers
Dimension has managed to butcher yet another one of Jackie Chan's best movies for a US release. Let's start off with the cover art -- it's just plain bad, very generic. Nowadays you have DVDs coming in stuff like metal cases and oversized tin boxes and here we get this crappy picture where Sammo and Jackie are a good 15 years older than in the movie. As for the movie itself, it's been pretty heavily cut and rescored. Now, having the original score may not matter much to you, but keep in mind that Jackie co-ordinated some things very closely to the soundtrack, and so some segments (such as the bar brawl) don't flow as well with the new score. The dubbing is just horrible. Jackie doesn't do his own voice, rather we get somebody doing an imitation of Jackie. Some of the minor characters meet even worse fates; the admiral sounds like someone doing a really bad imitation of Sean Connery. The extras are anything but; just a couple of 30-second "preview trailers" for a couple of the movies out of Dimension's "Jet Li Collection." The only decent thing this disc has going for it is good picture/sound quality, but that doesn't really justify having to sit through this mangled cut of the movie unless you can't find the HK version.
Rating: *