Born to Defend (Zhong Hua Ying Xiong) (1986)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Martial Arts	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1986
Running Time	88:31
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Jet Li
Studio Distributor	SIL-Metropole Org. Beyond Home Entertainment	Starring	Jia Er-Ge Yeung-Ping Sze Jet Li Kurt Roland Petersson Jia Song Paulo Tocha Erkang Zhao Michael J. Fox Peter D. Lago Tony Yuen
Case	Amaray-Opaque-Secure Clip
RPI	$14.90	Music	Hou De-Jian Qu Xiao-Song

    Born to Defend is also known as Born To Defence, and that is the title that appears when the film begins. Not only that, popping the disc into the computer reveals that the disc label is the latter title as well. The only things that differentiate this film from countless other Hong Kong martial arts films is that it stars Jet Li (billed as Jet Lee) and is directed by Jet Li, the only film that he has helmed thus far. It has been alleged that the bulk of the film was really directed by Ronnie Yu, but I have not been able to confirm this.

    The story begins in China at the end of World War 2, with a large battle against the Japanese won single-handedly by Jet (Li, of course). Naturally, the Americans arrive after the fighting has finished and proceed to drink, attack the women and abuse the locals. Jet has a series of run-ins with a bunch of sailors led by Bailey. For some reason, he ends up fighting the Americans in the ring for money. Provided that he loses each bout.

    The head American is Hans, a huge bearded guy who wears sunglasses all the time. He decides that Bailey is dishonourable and decides to restore American pride by killing Jet in the ring. So he has a stoush with Jet during a thunderstorm, and the bar where the ring is set up has a leaky roof, so soon the entire ring is awash. The fight soon becomes an all-in brawl (started by those fiendish white guys, naturally). The police arrive and break things up.

    After some more evil stuff from the Yankees, Jet has a final confrontation with Hans in a disused factory. You can probably guess what happens. There is also a subplot involving Jet falling in love with Na, the estranged prostitute daughter of his uncle. I guess that makes her his cousin, if Uncle really is a blood relative.

    In my experience, most Hong Kong martial arts films of the 1970s and 1980s had one of two similar storylines. Storyline one involved a young martial arts student seeking to avenge the death of his sifu or one of his relatives, first learning some new technique, then defeating the bad guy in a final battle, usually on the same patch of bare ground used in every film of the era. The bad guy would most likely be a monk with long white hair, moustache and beard. Storyline two had rival martial arts schools with different techniques pitted against each other ("my kung fu is better than your kung fu"), the bad guys being the ones who send one of their number to kick down the sign over the other's premises as a challenge. This one tends to fall into the first category, though the bad guys this time are foreigners rather than kung fu experts gone bad, and the setting is more modern.

    As I said, there is not much to set this film apart from countless others. There is a feeling of sameness about this film that prevented me from enjoying it. That, and the bad acting, poor script, average cinematography and terrible dubbing. Some of the fight scenes are okay but they are nothing to write home about. You would be better off seeing one of Li's later films, where he spends most of the time belting the living suitcase out of the other guy, instead of having the living suitcase belted out of him as in this film.

Video

    The film is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is a pan and scan transfer of the 1.85:1 original. Not much seems to have been done with the possibilities of the widescreen format, as I did not get the feeling that the narrower aspect ratio made me miss any of the action. Still, we cannot tell from this disc.

    The transfer looks like it was taken from a video master. Viewing it on a PC shows some tracking noise at the very bottom of the image that confirms this. The image is not very sharp at all, with some video noise present throughout and a fuzziness and graininess to the image. Shadow detail is not brilliant but it is satisfactory. The colour looks washed out and there is a feeling of drabness about the production.

    The video transfer has other problems as well. There are issues with analogue tape tracking errors. Every so often there is a brief horizontal white line, and during most of the film the image seems to warp, as if the tracking was slightly off. There is also a fair bit of low level noise present.

    There were the usual film artefacts, such as dirt and minor print damage, though these are small beer in comparison to the other problems. And at 1:29, the characters "A2" appear in white in the bottom right hand corner.

    There are no subtitles on this single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The film has a single audio track, in English Dolby Digital 1.0 mono, which would approximate the audio on the original film.

    The audio is reasonable, with dialogue and effects being relatively clear and distinct. The audio sync is poor, given that this film has been dubbed into English. The voice actors are not very good, with poor delivery of some admittedly silly dialogue. For example, Hans taunts Jet and says "I'll tell everyone that you're yellow". Well, he is, isn't he? The American also says "muthaf****r" and "you b*st*rd" a lot.

    The music score is by Hou De-Jian and Qu Xiao-Song, and is standard fare for this sort of film. It sounds okay in this audio transfer.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    No extras are provided.

    There has been a Region 1 release of this film. In comparison to the Region 1, the Region 4 misses out on:

• Cantonese and English language Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack with subtitles
• Lee-thal Weapon, an hour long documentary looking at Jet Li's career and the production of Once Upon A Time In China

    The Region 1 misses out only on an English dubbed soundtrack. The reviews I have located of this release suggest that the subtitles are burned in on the print used for the transfer and the film is not framed with the subtitles in mind, so that any significant amount of overscan on the display device partially obscures them. The subtitles are also supposed to contain spelling mistakes, though that is not unusual in Hong Kong films. The Cantonese/English soundtrack is also dubbed, and apparently the English dubbing is atrocious.

    The Region 1 release was available separately at one time, but it has been withdrawn from sale and is only available as part of a three-disc set with two other Li films. Even then the price is under US$10.

    Unfortunately this film is only available on VCD in Region 3 at this time.

    The documentary is enough for me to declare the Region 1 the winner. However, there is another release of this film due in Region 1 in May 2004 from Buena Vista, and according to several vendor sites this will be in widescreen format, so that may be more desirable than the earlier Region 1 release.

    A pretty poor film poorly transferred to DVD. Look to the Region 1 instead, or wait for a properly mastered release.

    The video quality is poor.

    The audio quality is average.

    The extras cupboard is bare.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall