Review for The Valiant Ones

Introduction

It’s odd that I don’t like wuxia movies, but ever since I saw the crowd-pleasing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I’ve been unable to take the overpowered wire-fu genre seriously. I say it’s odd because I can watch a Hollywood comic book adaptation without any qualms, and when you think about it, they really are two sides of the same coin. So every once in a while, I’ll find a wuxia flick to watch, hoping that this time, I’ll see what the point is. This year, I’m giving The Valiant Ones a go, a King Hu movie from 1975. Eureka Entertainment have gone all out for this film. It got a full 4k restoration, so as well as the Blu-ray that I’m looking at, they’ve also released the film on 4k UHD.


The 16th Century saw a time of complacency from the rulers in China. Chinese and Japanese bandits joined forces as the Wokou pirates to prey on the Chinese mainland, and none of the authorities could get to grips with the problem. Where brute force fails, the Emperor decides to use guile, and assigns master strategist Yu Da-you and his small band to deal with the menace. But there is more than just piracy at work in China.

The Disc

A 4k restoration indeed! The 2.35:1 widescreen 1080p transfer looks fantastic on this disc. If you want better than this, you will have to go for the UHD instead. The image is clear and sharp, colours are rich and consistent, and detail levels are excellent, the contrast spot-on. There are absolutely no signs of age, or print damage, and no sign of visible compression either. This 50 year old film looks brand new on this release. The sole audio track is a PCM 1.0 Mono Mandarin track with well timed and typo-free English subtitles. The audio is clear, with no hiss or distortion, sounding warm and making the most of the action and the music, while keeping the dialogue clear.

The images in this review were kindly supplied by Eureka Entertainment.

Extras

The disc boots to a static menu. You’ll find the following extras on the disc.

Audio Commentary with Frank Djeng
Tony Rayns on The Valiant Ones (23:58)
Tsar of all Wuxia (21:44)
The Life of a Lucky Stuntman (20:54)
My Father and I (25:50)
Memories of Hu (26:15)
Frederic Ambroisine 2003 Interview with Hsu Feng (16:54)
Frederic Ambroisine 2016 Interview with Ng Ming-Choi (4:18)

The first run release comes with a 20-page booklet on the film with writing on the film from Jonathan Clements.

Conclusion

The blurb describes The Valiant Ones as “King Hu’s last great masterpiece from the golden age of wuxia cinema”. I’m not qualified to comment on that, but I must admit that I like this film a fair bit more than other films I have seen in this genre, and ironically, because it feels less like those films, less like a wuxia for want of a better explanation. The story is pretty generic, a small group of heroes fighting against a powerful and more numerous enemy, and like so many of these period fantasies, it has a small kernel of actual history to its fancifulness. But I enjoyed the action a lot more than I do in such films, and I enjoyed the characters too.


So often in this genre, characters feel like archetypes, and stories unfold in ‘proper’ ways. That’s usually what turns me off, even more so than the wire-fu; but The Valiant Ones has characters, both when it comes to the protagonists and the antagonists that feel more realistic, nuanced, and more than 2-dimensional. They all stand out as unique for one thing, they all have their shtick or style, and the story gives them a degree of complexity and the sense that they’re holding things close to their chests. Most of the other wuxia films that I have seen had characters that felt like the white hats and black hats in the early Westerns. Not here though.


I also appreciate the action, which is light on the gravity defying wire-fu, and feels more grounded and weighty. It’s no surprise to see that action choreography came from Sammo Hung, who also appears as one of the villains. He’s joined by his fellow Beijing Opera School graduates in the film, with Yuen Biao appearing in a small role, while Jackie Chan worked as a stuntman on the film. There’s variety, and ingenuity to the action, matching the ingenuity and tactical inventiveness of Yu Da-you that makes the film fun to watch.


The Valiant Ones is a wuxia movie leaning more to the kind of kung-fu that I’m more comfortable with, but it is still a period wuxia movie, which is not my genre of choice. Still it’s certainly not as mundane as I usually find the genre to be, and I did get a kick out of seeing Roy Chiao leading a film. Most people in the West will know him from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where he played Lao Tse. The Valiant Ones can be had on Blu-ray and 4k UHD direct from Eureka, from Terracotta, and from mainstream retailers.