Even the coldest men may someday be able achieve a state of enlightment, but that won’t prevent him from having to face the price of his previous actions.
What They Say:
In a young Republic of China, where greedy warlords fuel a period of war and strife, Hou Jie (Andy Lau) arrogantly shows no mercy to his enemies seeking refuge with the benign and compassionate Shaolin monks. After unscrupulously killing a wounded enemy, Hou Jie pays a terrible price for his actions and is forced to seek refuge in the same Shaolin Monastery he blatantly disrespected. Hou Jie’s traitorous second-in-command Cao Man (Nicholas Tse) continues where the once-warlord left off, betraying his country and his own people. Hou Jie must adapt to Shaolin principles to stop the monster he created.
The Review:
Audio:
The feature contains two language tracks, the original Cantonese dialogue as well as an English language dub, both with a 5.1 and 2.0 option. For the purpose of this review the 5.1 Cantonese track was used and it was found to be an effective one free of dropouts or distortions. It is a primarily center speaker driven track that uses some directionality when required that isn’t as sensitive as some other tracks released from Well Go USA in the past but it is up to the task of conveying the most important and prominent tasks.
Video:
Originally produced in 2011 the feature is presented here 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. The video is fairly decent with some items noticed that included grain, a good deal of noise which can be distracting in certain scenes, some aliasing, dot crawl, and a couple CGI mattes being noticeable on a couple occasions. Oddly the action scenes show up pretty clear and crisp with some of the more mundane ones showing these issues. Minus these issues the video works well and the colors are very strong and the blacks are solid (minus some CGI mattes).
Packaging:
The DVD arrives in a standard DVD case that has an image of the two main characters from the film as well as making sure to feature Jackie Chan who is a presence in the film in more of a supporting than starring role. The main two actors are featured wearing the outfits they sport at the end of the film while Chan wears a rather common outfit that he wears during most of his appearances. The back of the cover feature Andy Lau in a Buddhist pose as well as some fighting images from the film. One image present is a silhouette of a person in a fighting stance with the main characters inside it and the copy, credits and specs also present.
The disc itself features an image of the temple similar to the cover, but minus a character leaping in front of it. Well Go USA provides an extra level of promotion to catch attention by including a slipcover with some parts slightly raised and a metallic gold colored ink used on the title on the front cover.
Menu:
The main menu uses the same image of Lau in Buddhist stance from the back of the DVD cover against the temple used in the feature. The images appear using a gold shimmer effect on the right while the left side has images from the feature play over some clouds while an instrumental track plays as the background music. The options on the main menu are displayed in gold and turn red when highlighted. The individual option menus use images from the film against gold colored clouds with the selectable options either in white for that screen’s exclusives or gold if the relate to the main menu. The menus are quick to respond to changes in selection and to implement selections made with minimal delay.
Extras:
While a pair of International trailers, a theatrical trailer and deleted scenes may seem a bit standard at first glance that illusion is shattered when one selects the deleted scenes to find just shy of 45 minutes of footage present that really can help create some depth to some scenes and motivations. In watching it is possible to tell why the scenes were cut to move the story along but this material almost works like a series of shorts to help create depth to the characters. Sadly for English dub fans the material is sub only, but having that much material present and subbed is pretty astonishing in and of itself.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
In the early days of the Republic of China power was held by the strong Warlords who then reached out to seize more power and fought each other even as foreign powers were expressing an interest in the country. The film opens as one of the stronger Warlords of the area, Hou Jie, has captured the city of Dengfeng in Henan. Hou Jie is a ruthless man who seeks the land and gold that the area’s current Warlord, Huo Long, possesses.
The battles are merciless and many are killed in its wake, leaving only the Buddhist monks from the local Shaolin Temple to care for the dead as Hou Long’s men are driven back in defeat. As the monks go about this grisly task of caring for the dead two groups of soldiers ride through their midst, the first being Huo Long and a few remaining soldiers and the other being the men of Hou Jie who pursue them like the hounds of hell. Huo Long manages to find temporary shelter in the waves of refugees camped outside the Shaolin Temple but Jie’s men will not let this situation stop them.
As the soldiers try to flush Huo Long out he escapes into the temple seeking sanctuary and tries to bargain with Jie’s right hand man Cao Man. Long will surrender his territory and gold in exchange for his life, an act Cao Man seems ready to accept until Hou Jie arrives and kills the man, explaining that one should never give a break to a man who has been placed in a disadvantage. Hou Jie further insults the temple with graffiti before leaving, adding one further disrespect to the temple on top of the murder he committed.
Things aren’t so simple for Hou Jie though as he faces competition from fellow Warlord and sworn brother Song Hu as he tries to ensure his own power. When Song Hu announces an arranged marriage between his son and Hou Jie’s daughter Hou Jie fears betrayal and plots to have the Warlord killed along with his wife and son.
On top of these issues Hou Jie is trying to deal with a military power (Westerners of some sort though their country of origin isn’t identified) that is looking to make inroads into China, ostensibly trading weapons such as machine guns for the right to build a railroad through the area. Hou Jie refuses suspecting there is an ulterior motive at work as he believes the Westerners will not be content simply constructing- and then passing through- his homeland on their new transport. When Cao Man questions him in front of them military men Hou Jie puts Cao Man in his place but the seeds of betrayal will soon sprout out of the lessons that Hou Jie has spent his life demonstrating and fertilizing.
The night that Hou Jie planned to betray Song Hu at a restaurant instead becomes the most horrific night of his life. Rather than betrayer Hou Jie finds himself betrayed with his family that he cares for more than his own life also squarely in the sights of his unforeseen enemy. Song Hu attempts a desperate escape with his daughter but the limits of his strength are shown and he finds she is at death’s door.
In this frantic state he brings himself to the doors of the Shaolin Temple he defiled and mocked, willing to pay any price to have them heal her only to find that there is a limit to what money can bring. Now with his meaning in life gone he finds himself wandering the Temple and its refugee camp as an almost lifeless husk. While in this state he falls into a boar trap and meets a humble cook Wudao. Wudao works to feed all the people and he converses with Hou Lie, slowly bringing Hou Jie out of his grief and also helping him open his eyes to the world he helped create and the mistakes he made with his misplaced priorities.
With time Hou Jie comes to regret his past life and the path he walked and he becomes a disciple of Buddha. This new found look at life may change his soul but the world around him is still in a form he helped mold and he discovers that a number of the refugees’ sons have gone missing. Moved to help them he goes to find them and he discovers that Cao Man is now in charge of his former army and that the Chinese men’s lives, including some of the men he went searching for, are being lost building a railroad for the foreign power he earlier tried to reject.
Now Hou Jie feels he must try to change Cao Man’s ways but the man he has molded in his former image has his own plans- plans that won’t allow Hou Jie or anyone else at the temple who have sheltered him to continue living. But Hou Jie won’t be alone as the plight of the people have moved the normally reserved monks to act in a way that the Temple doesn’t approve of but which their hearts demand. With these forces on a collision course the temporary life span of life looks to become much shorter as the road to atonement is set to become a hellish path bathed in blood.
Tales that feature martial arts exhibitions often lend themselves to rather fanciful stories where one man fights an entire army, some supernatural entity or perhaps comes from humble means to rally an empire against tyranny. Shaolin eschews this pattern by making a man who would be a villain in many of these tales to be defeated its central character. By using Andy Lau’s Hou Jie as its center the film manages to create a story that in many ways is more powerful than the average grand, empire sweeping epic but is no less impressive in its use of locals and individuals to carry the story.
Watching Lau as his character comes to terms with menace of the would be tyrant he helped to create while having to suffer the consequences of his actions as he travels his painful path of redemption helps to underscore the message of the tale. The story is skillfully enough written that the impression isn’t given that it is resorting to a sense that the film is trying to deliver its message with an iron club to the back of the audiences head. That the tale survives- and even thrives- by having its message as a soft approach that the audience isn’t bullied into accepting helps to really make the events stronger as the story has the audience come to it as much as it is brought to them.
The film isn’t flawless, particularly during the initial arc as there is a lot less subtlety in the early introduction to characters which results in a rather callous take on characters before the feature has really gone out of its way to give them any depth. While it is understandable that the goal is to show the characters and where they are in their lives and their philosophy before getting to the meat aspect of the changes they undertake it still feels like something is a bit on the lite side initially. Some of this is corrected in the 40 plus minutes of deleted scenes but it still feels like the initial act leaves one grasping for a place to connect until the beginning of the second act.
Also, the film aims for a grand flourish which normally works alright until a scene near the end of the first act where it seems to feel that trying to replicate a major movie chase is in order which. Rather than provide tension, the scene serves to help highlight the absurdity of the chase rather than help with the establishing a world environment and assist with the important task of suspension of disbelief that films relay on. The other place the film falls a bit short is in creating a sense of the passing of time so one is left on their own to decide how much time must have taken place to make some of the changes believable.
In Summary:
Shaolin is impressive tale of a young country and the threats that it encounters both from those who have seized power for their own purposes within it and those from without who have their own machinations. In this environment, one man with have his eyes opened to the world he has helped to create and he will have to give his all to try to rectify mistakes made-but will those mistakes be greater than he can account for? Shaolin is a tale with some fantastic environments and impressive martial arts displays that are only overshadowed by the drama and humanity its characters demonstrate.
Features:
Cantonese 2.0 Lanuage, Cantonese 5.1 Language, English 2.0 Language, English 5.1 Language, Trailers, Deleted Scenes
Content Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B-
Video Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: A-
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Released By: Well Go USA
Release Date: October 25th, 2011
MSRP: $24.95
Running Time: 131 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Samsung 50″ Plasma HDTV, Denon AVR-790 Receiver with 5.1 Sony Surround Sound Speakers, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080.
