Not a full review here as we've reviewed the film repeatedly in the past - hit the links below - but I had the chance to take a look at the new Dragon Dynasty two disc release of Benny Chan's Hong Kong action flick Invisible Target a couple days ago and it's worth mentioning. We've jabbed at DD a couple times for releasing "Ultimate Editions" that didn't live up to the name but credit where it's due: this is a good one. Video quality is good, as is the audio but the real draw is the bonus features. No doubt about it here, this is the best release the film is likely to receive anywhere in the world, the Hong Kong disc included. Most of the special features are brand new for this release and all are solid.
On disc one you get an English language commentary with Bey Logan, Jaycee Chan, Andy On and Shawn Yue. This is a very entertaining track that begins with Logan joking that Nick Tse couldn't join them because he was busy hunting down Edison Chen, a surprising reference to the recent Chen sex photo scandal involving Tse's wife that clearly surprised the other three in the room and had them rushing to change the subject. All involved are relaxed, talkative and clearly having a good time telling stories about the film with Logan doing a solid job playing moderator. Also on disc one is an extended making of the film.
On to disc two, and there's no complaining that the company didn't go all out with these. In addition to a healthy selection of deleted and extended scenes - all offered up with commentary by director Benny Chan - you get brand new extended interviews with Benny Chan, Jaycee Chan, Shawn Yue, Wu Jing, Philip Ng, Vincent Sze and Andy On. All of the interview subjects are talkative and candid about the film process and all of the interview segments clock in at roughly twenty minutes so they're nicely in depth.
I wouldn't call Invisible Target a great film but it's certainly a fun one and it's got an excellent release here.
This is one of my favourite action movies of last year, alongside SPL and City of Violence. I especially love the restaurant fight where Jaycee takes on a whole gang, with Nick Tse and Shawn Yue reluctantly backing him up.
Dragon Dynasty has put out some outstanding discs so I'm looking forward to this. My only problem with DD is their habit (or should I say, the Weinstein's habit) of changing the titles to bottom of the barrel, generic pap. "Killzone"? "Legend of the Black Scorpion"??
I really wish they would start putting the DD titles out on Bluray.
I already own the HK DVD and the Bluray of this, but I would certainly pick it up if they put out a Bluray, just for all of the extras, and possibly a better transfer.
I enjoyed this much more than Flash Point. Might have to sell my HK DVD for this.
I agree they should put these out on Blu-ray.
How bad are the subtitles? It's Dragon Dynasty, so it's safe to assume they're not retranslated (unless they're dubtitles).
It's hard to wrap my head around the notion of a worthwhile Benny Chan movie. I know he's got it in him, I remember BIG BULLET kicking metric truckloads of ass (yet [i]another[/i] thoroughly worthwhile film unavailable thanks to Warner Bros. burying the Golden Harvest library in a deep, deep hole) but there's a lot of mediocre-to-bad Jackie Chan movies directed by Benny in between then and now. To be fair to Benny, WHO AM I? was solid.
Bey Logan's a tool for bringing up the Edison Chen scandal at all. It's far too soon, considering the havoc that Edison's inexcusably poor data security practices wreaked*. Those guys are possibly friends and would have to be at least acquainted with all concerned parties in that mess. Small wonder they wanted to talk about anything but that.
*Memo to Edison Chen - Once you've secured the flux capacitor, constructed the time machine, and gone back to before you took your laptop in for the servicing that deep-sixed your career, go to /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility. Create a new disk image, and select the maximum level of encryption. This is tough, I know. Now think of a good password that nobody else will be able to guess, and that you yourself won't forget. Your favorite Conway Twitty album or something else that nobody would ever even suspect. Throw ebonics, numbers and symbols into the mix to foil a brute force dictionary attack. Don't store the freaking password on your keychain, Edison. That defeats the purpose of this entire exercise. Copy homemade HK starlet porn to this virtual drive, and delete it from the main hard drive. [b]Secure empty[/b] the Trash. Eject disk image. And you're welcome.
So this version isn't cut?