Kill Zone

Introduction

Hong Kong Legends is back! Well… not exactly. Until a few years ago, Hong Kong Legends and its sister label Premier Asia were the foremost purveyors of Far Eastern cinema, bringing the more mainstream and audience friendly titles to the UK, as well as plenty of kung fu classics, while Tartan handled the more arthouse and eclectic stuff. Hong Kong Legends pretty much ran out of classic Hong Kong cinema to release, but their biggest loss was that of master commentator Bey Logan, who went to the US label Dragon Dynasty. The US was just getting on this kung fu bandwagon at the time, finally releasing quality product through the auspices of the Weinstein Company, and so Bey Logan reworked some of his kung fu classic commentaries for the US market (usually with Brett Ratner in tow). With the US market benefiting from Bey Logan, and getting first crack at the new releases, Hong Kong Legends and Premier Asia effectively fizzled out. They've been defunct as active distributors for over 2 years now, and around the same time Tartan collapsed as well.


But, the audience for Asian cinema certainly hasn't dried up, the appetite just gets larger and larger, and pretty soon pretenders to the HKL and Premier Asia thrones were popping up out of the woodwork. Some were laughably cheap and dismal, the less said about 55th Chamber the better, but some were finding niches that hadn't previously been exploited. Anime distributors are now turning to Japanese cinema to diversify their portfolios, and there are some interesting movies coming via Manga and MVM, while 4Digital Asia also offers some live action manga adaptations. The poster boy for eclectic Japanese and Korean cinema now has to be Third Window Films, currently releasing some of the quirkiest features around, and there are many more labels besides. In the past year, Tartan has been resurrected, offering their catalogue on this new fangled Blu-ray thing. But the staunch defender of Hong Kong cinema, the promoter of all things martial arts in the absence of HKL has to be Cine Asia, a label which still offers new Jackie Chan films, new hard boiled cop thrillers, modern kung fu classics and cinema from further afield in South East Asia.


Having said that, they have been a little constrained by what they can source, with most of their releases until very recently suffering from standards conversions, with 2-disc ultimate editions that while loaded with extras, were formulaic EPK packages that weren't all that inspiring, and perhaps an inability to get hold of the most cherry of titles. All of that has changed, now that they have gone into partnership with Dragon Dynasty to distribute their titles in the UK. With the release of The Shinjuku Incident recently indicating a switch to native Film to PAL transfers, and the extensive back catalogue that the Dragon Dynasty brings with it, it's almost like having Hong Kong Legends back again, sealed with the kiss of a Bey Logan commentary track. Three years ago, Dragon Dynasty's first US release was Kill Zone. We get it now, with all the trimmings, and with an option that the US hasn't got; we get a Blu-ray as well, and Fist of Legend will be hot on its heels.


But first Kill Zone, also known as SPL or Saat Po Long. All you really need to know is Sammo Hung versus Donnie Yen. It won the award for best action if you want more. If you want the full nitty-gritty, it's one of those hard-boiled HK cop thrillers, with added kung fu. Inspector Chung was escorting a witness and his family to testify at the trial of powerful gangster Wong Po, when the car they were in was rammed off the road, killing the witness and his wife, making an orphan of their daughter, and leaving Chung injured and nursing a desire for revenge. Left taking care of the little girl, he and his men swore to bring Wong Po down by any means necessary, and given that Chung was given a deadline by the diagnosis of a malignant tumour, any means were what they used. Three years later, and with Chung's unit about to be passed on to a new commanding officer, Chung finds that he has just two days left to fulfil his vow. Inspector Ma is a brutal cop, renowned for solving problems with his fists, but coming face to face with the dirty tricks that Chung and his men are using against Wong Po, and the brutality with which Wong Po responds, Ma finds that he has a chilling decision to make.

Picture

As mentioned previously, Cine Asia titles now come with native PAL transfers on DVD (of course that isn't an issue on Blu-ray), and watching a film without ghosting, judder or softness is how things should be. The 1.85:1 anamorphic image is clear and sharp throughout, colours are strong, and made in 2005, you won't find any annoyances like print damage or signs of age. The action comes across most clearly, and some of the set design is very impressive. The director Wilson Yip effortless uses dynamic devices like split screen to add energy to an already fast paced story. There is an occasional softness to the image, but that may be a creative choice rather than an artefact of the transfer.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 5.1 English and Cantonese, along with optional English subtitles. I haven't the slightest idea what the English dub sounds like, I didn't even give it a try, but the Cantonese is clear and audible throughout, and the subtitles are well timed and free of error. As you would expect from an action film, the speakers do get a workout during the action sequences, and the music is suitably pulse pounding for the genre. The only annoyance I have is with a horrendously timed layer change.

Extras

Already we feel like a proper, good old fashioned HKL disc with the animated menus (although Cine Asia has been doing these animated menus all along), but disc 1 has room for some interesting extras as well for a change.

Of course you'll want to know about the Bey Logan commentary track, and it's here in all its glory. I have so missed these information overloads. If you are unaware of Bey Logan, then you should know that he knows all there is to know about Hong Kong cinema, he's such a commentary god that if he (perish the thought) makes an error, the world will reshape itself to conform to what he has just said. There is no such thing as dead air in a Bey Logan commentary. What you get here is brimming full of pertinent, knowledgeable, and interesting information about the movie, the industry, and Hong Kong in general, delivered by someone who is engaging, witty, erudite and entertaining. Did I say how much I have missed these commentaries?


Also on Disc 1 are two Behind the Scenes: Anatomy of a Scene featurettes, Alleycats lasting 29 minutes, and Challenge of the Masters lasting 31. You can watch them as is, and they amount to the usual, context free b-roll footage, looking at the creation of the film's two major action sequences. They are not really all that inspiring that way, but they do also come with an optional Bey Logan and Donnie Yen commentary. Now this is the way to watch these featurettes, as Bey Logan interviews Donnie Yen on how he choreographed the scenes, and how it works in the Hong Kong film industry. Watched this way, you can't tear your attention away from the screen.

Finally there are a couple of trailers, and 4 TV spots in a trailer gallery.


The rest of the extras are on disc 2.

First up is the Interview Gallery, which offers interviews with members of the cast, and the director. Sammo Hung speaks for 15 minutes about his first villainous role in 25 years or more, Donnie Yen talks for 39 minutes in an English language featurette on his role as action director in this film. You'll also find contributions from Simon Yam (14 minutes), Jacky Wu (23 minutes), and director Wilson Yip (18 minutes). Most of the comments here are worth listening to, and certainly a cut above the usual EPK nature of Cine Asia Interview Galleries.

Pure EPK is the Making of Documentary, which is short and sweet at just 10 minutes.

Conclusion

Much as I love Cine Asia upping the quality of their releases, with the improved image quality, and the welcome return of Bey Logan to British shop shelves, it all means nothing if the film isn't very good. Fortunately I can say that Kill Zone is a peach of a little action thriller, ninety minutes of pure adrenaline, edge of the seat, tension-tightening entertainment, and it's the perfect start for a new era of collaboration between Cine Asia and Dragon Dynasty.


Kill Zone was initially meant to be just another typical Hong Kong police thriller, and it accomplishes that task well, gritty, dirty and amoral, with Sammo Hung brilliantly cast against type as the gangster Wong Po. He has an odd dichotomy to his character, brutal and vicious at work, yet a loving husband and doting father in his personal life, yet the duality never feels forced or unreal in the film. His nemesis is Inspector Chung, played with deft understatement by Simon Yam, whose single-minded pursuit of Wong Po takes him so far across the line that he and his men practically become criminals themselves. Again they have that dichotomy to their characters, whereas they are ruthless, and unstinting in their pursuit of vengeance, but also have more sympathetic back-stories motivating them. The film is a down-spiral of escalation, as both sides keep pushing the limits of amorality and violence in their tit for tat desire for revenge.


It would have been a good enough film with just that storyline, up there with The Beast Stalker for intensity. But somewhere along the line it was decided that Kill Zone needed some martial arts to give it an extra kick. Which is where Donnie Yen comes in. He plays the new cop on the block, Inspector Ma, and he plays his dilemma well, a brutal cop himself brought face to face with genuine corruption in the ranks, yet corruption for the most honourable of reasons. But Donnie Yen also choreographed the film's main action set pieces, and so was reborn Hong Kong's martial arts cop movie, in the vein of Police Story some 20 years previously. The thing was that budget was lacking, so out went the CGI, out went the wire work, and out went the explosions and over the top stunts, and in came brutal, physical, and visceral hand to hand combat, where the action is intense, personal and close up. The two outstanding sequences are a knife fight with Jacky Wu in an alleyway, which is breathtaking in its speed and choreography, and then the final climactic battle between Sammo and Donnie, which is more Mixed Martial Arts than it is traditional Wuxia. It's a side of Sammo that you probably haven't seen before, and the climax is spine tingling in its power. It certainly shows that there is room in cinema for action without wires and without digital enhancement.


However, Kill Zone isn't the deepest of stories when all is said and done, and it's another of those stories where reality twists to serve the needs of the plot. Fortunately the pace is so strong and relentless that you just aren't given pause to question any of the film's inconsistencies. Afterwards however, you may wind up wondering why certain events happen the way they do, and realise the sheer un-likeliness of other plot developments. The important thing is that you don't care while you're watching; this is just a film to enjoy. Cine Asia and Dragon Dynasty kick things off in style with Kill Zone. It's definitely worth a watch, and with the wealth of extra features (and Bey Logan), it's also worth a place in your DVD or Blu-ray collection. Long may this collaboration continue!