Gen X Cops (Tejing Xinrenlei) (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-Making Of Theatrical Trailer Trailer-First Option, Beast Cops, The Heroic Trio, The Last Blood Trailer-Purple Storm
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	106:02
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (86:40)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Benny Chan
Studio Distributor	Media Asia Beyond Home Entertainment	Starring	Nicholas Tse Stephen Fung Sam Lee Grace Yip Eric Tsang Daniel Wu Tôru Nakamura Terence Yin Francis Ng Jaymee Ong Moses Chan Bey Logan Ken Lo
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	Nathan Wang

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.55:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    This is one of a number of contemporary Hong Kong films released by Force Video on DVD. Apart from some older martial arts films, there are a group of more recent action films, such as Beast Cops, Purple Storm, First Option and The Last Blood. Gen-X Cops was a 1999 cinema release, so it has taken some 5 years to reach DVD on our shores. It dates from after the Chinese takeover, an event which led many of the Hong Kong film industry's finest to depart for overseas and caused the cinema to enter a slump from which it has barely recovered.

    A group of Japanese crooks linked to a Hong Kong triad steal some explosives which they plan to set off, causing massive destruction. The Hong Kong police are on the job, but our intrepid hero Chan (Eric Tsang), who seems to have some mental stability issues, has been marginalised. He has been given the task of recruiting some rookie officers for undercover surveillance purposes, and he chooses three misfits named Jack, Match and Alien because they do not look like cops. There is also a female police officer named Y2K who involves herself after the killing of her officer brother. They infiltrate the triad (rather too easily in my opinion) and become suspects themselves. They must stop the bad guys and prevent half of Hong Kong being blown to smithereens.

    This film was co-produced by Jackie Chan (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) who makes a cameo appearance at the end of the film . There are dead spots, mainly when some rather goofy comedy is introduced, but for the greater part of this film this is typical Hong Kong entertainment. Fast paced, plenty of action, stunts and explosions, with a bigger budget than usual spent quite well on the special effects. Gen-X Cops is not unlike an Eastern version of a Hollywood blockbuster action film, even to the extent of hiring some American special effects experts.

    The leading actors appear to have been cast because of their looks rather than because of their acting talents, which doesn't help with the character development sequences. The director Benny Chan (no relation to Jackie) also wrote the script. Don't think too much about what you are seeing and you will enjoy this film. Perhaps not via this disc, however.

Video

    The film is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.55:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. There appears to be some cropping at the right and left edges of the film, as some of the opening credits are truncated. The original aspect ratio was 2.35:1, so there must be some additional matting applied.

    The image is reasonably sharp. Shadow detail is not as good as it could have been, with little detail visible in darkened areas of the image. For instance, most of the characters have dark hair and all you can see is a dark clump of hair with little or no detail. It looks like the contrast was boosted slightly.

    Colour is satisfactory, although it looks a bit too saturated in the yellow part of the spectrum. Blacks are quite black and solid. The overall look of the film is a little flat, probably due to the lighting not being very subtle.

    I did not notice any major film artefacts, apart from a little dirt and dust and the occasional white fleck. There is a fair amount of aliasing present, which can be seen at 12:22 for example. The film is generally grainy, and it seems to me to be a bit more grainy than I would like. Telecine wobble is there throughout the film, but it is not bad enough to be annoying.

    No subtitles are provided. The film is presented on an RSDL-formatted disc with the layer break occurring at 86:40 during a cut between scenes and is only mildly disruptive.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    A single audio track is provided, in English Dolby Digital 2.0. This is a standard stereo mix with an adequate if undistinguished soundstage. For this type of film, with an emphasis on action and thrills, we really should be getting a 5.1 mix. Switching the receiver to Pro Logic mode gets some of the music coming out of the rear channels, but it is so faint it is hardly worth bothering. There is no subwoofer activity.

    As you may have guessed, this is an English dub of the original and the disc does not have the Cantonese original. I have no information as to whether this film was recorded with a soundtrack in Cantonese, or whether that soundtrack was looped afterwards like the English version. It seems to me that some of the soundtrack may have been recorded live, as the Japanese characters speak in both Japanese and English with no discernable lip sync issues. The main Japanese character also speaks English with a noticeable accent, and this seems to me to be his real voice. There is also a Canadian character who speaks with an dubbed Australian accent.

    Otherwise, the actors are dubbed into a sort of American-sounding English, with the usual audio sync issues. This dub is not as bad as most I have heard, and while the voices do not always suit the characters, you can still watch without cringing too much. However, I would much rather hear this in the original language, and it is very disappointing that we only get an English soundtrack.

    The music score is by Nathan Wang and is reasonably subtle as these things go. I have to say I did not really notice it, so it must be well integrated into the film.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The menu interface is annoying. On the extras menu and the chapter selection menu, the item highlighted has a flashing yellow and white border. To select it, you have to click when the item is yellow.

Main Menu Audio & Animation

    The main menu is graphics over a scene from the film with accompanying audio.

Featurette-The Making Of Gen-X Cops (33:00)

    This is a substantial featurette on the making of the film. Obviously made for publicity purposes, this is mostly in Cantonese with burned-in English subtitles, though some of it is in English (but is not dubbed). This makes it even more annoying that the main feature is dubbed. The actors talk about their roles, the director talks about the actors, we get to see the actors performing their own dangerous stunts, and the theme song clip is included. This is reasonably interesting though I am not sure I would watch it again. The aspect ratio is 1.33:1.

Theatrical Trailer (1:13)

Trailers (11:41)

    Apart from the trailer for Gen-X Cops, included are trailers for First Option, Beast Cops, The Heroic Trio, The Last Blood and Purple Storm. You only have the option to play all of the trailers, but at least they are separated by chapter marks. All are presented in widescreen aspect ratios but are not 16x9 enhanced.

    No contest really. Both the US Region 1 and UK Region 2 discs get Cantonese Dolby Digital 5.1 and English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks. They also get the featurette extra, and the correct aspect ratio. The Region 1 also gets 51 minutes of deleted scenes, so it is the winner.

    A slick and entertaining Hong Kong actioner let down by the absence of an original language audio track and the absence of a surround mix.

    The video quality is average.

    The audio quality is satisfactory.

    The extras are better than some from this source.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall