Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (Qian li zou dan qi) (2005)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Dolby Digital Trailer Featurette-Making Of-(18:40) Trailer-Monster House; Open Season; Zoom Trailer-The Benchwarmers; Yours, Mine & Ours
Rating
Year Of Production	2005
Running Time	104:30
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (60:51)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Yimou Zhang
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Ken Takakura Shinobu Terajima Kiichi Nakai Jiamin Li Lin Qiu Jiang Wen Ken Nakamoto Li Bin Li Ziliang Chen Zhezhou He Zhenbo Yang
Case	?
RPI	$39.95	Music	Wenjing Guo

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Spanish Portuguese Arabic Czech Danish Dutch Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Romanian Swedish Turkish	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Takata (Ken Takakura) is an elderly chap who harbours great regret over the years of silence between he and his estranged son, Kenichi (Kiichi Nakai). When Kenichi becomes gravely ill, his wife Rie (Shinobu Terajima) contacts Takata urgently and he races to the hospital only to find his visit refused by his son. Crushed, but wanting to make some kind of gesture, Rie hands him a video tape, saying it contains footage of Kenichi's recent trip to China. The tape contains a video he made of a traditional mask opera, complete with an interview of the lead singer. After the performance, the lead singer apologises for having a flu and promises to perform the greatest Chinese mask opera for them; Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, stating that he is one of the few who are talented enough to perform the difficult piece. Kenichi promises on tape to return to see the performance, but clearly never made it back.

    With his son still refusing to see him, Takata makes an impulsive decision to travel to Lijiang City, China to film the opera himself, with a mind to show his son on his return to Tokyo. There are a number of hurdles Takata must overcome before he can view the Opera, the first and most disappointing one is the fact that the lead singer is now serving prison time for assault. With the help of a local interpreter, Takata must sieve through endless red tape and governmental bureaucracy to gain access to the prisoner and arrange a performance. Takata is stubborn, determined and fuelled by love for his son to capture the performance, but when he finally gets to the prison he finds he is unable to film because the lead singer, Li (Li Jiamin), is far too emotional. He's missing his own boy- an illegitimate son he never met. Takata feels deeply sympathetic to Li and vows to bring to two together before he films the opera.

    Takata travels to a remote Chinese village to find the boy, Yang Yang (Yang Zhenbo), but finds his mother has died and he is now considered a ward of the village. The journey is far from over and despite their language barriers, Takata will develop a bond with the boy that may help ease the pain of his own missed opportunities.

    Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles is quite a departure for director Zhang Yimou, given his recent focus on action and swordplay in films such as Hero and House of Flying Daggers. This film is genuinely moving, buoyed by astounding performances from the largely amateur cast. Japanese cinema legend Ken Takakura is very powerful in his role as the stubborn father.

    Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles is a beautiful film that proves the journey is only half the battle and, in what is sadly a rare feat for filmmaking, reinforces the importance of a loving father-son bond.

Video

    The transfer is presented in the film's original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1, with 16x9 enhancement.

    The image is generally sharp and clear, but does not fare too well when viewed on a big screen. Grain is the main issue here, and it appears to be a combination of both film and compression grain. The image is very noisy in some scenes, particularly in lower light.

    Colours are bold and well handled. I didn't note any bleeding or inconsistencies in the image, while skin tones appear relatively accurate.

    MPEG compression issues range from haloing around foreground objects to a noticeable crawl of grain in some scenes. Film artefacts are present, but never extend beyond a slight amount of wobble and the odd spec of dirt here or there. An example of extreme grain can be seen at 46:56, while a slightly wobbly shot is present at 60:17.

    Two English subtitle streams are included, among a myriad of other languages. The first is your average white text, which is well paced and easy to read. The second English stream is contained in a black bar that obscures a large portion of the image.

    This disc is dual layered, however I did not notice the transition on my system. The break is placed in a still, quiet moment between scenes at 60:51.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are two soundtracks accompanying this film on DVD. The default soundtrack is the film's original audio; a mixture of Mandarin and Japanese, presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s). A Spanish dub is included.

    The dialogue is always prominent and easy to discern above effects and score. The ADR is seamless and audio sync is perfect.

    The surround channels are used only for subtleties such as adding a little weight to the score, as well as some atmospherics. Seagulls can be heard passing in the rear channels at 10:30, and a whistle echoes behind the viewer at 69:45. Voices are generally confined to the front centre channel.

    The score is traditional in flavour, with pan flutes and other traditional string instruments, as well as percussion. The music suits the mood and pace of the film perfectly.

    The subwoofer is used to augment the drums in the score, which is nice. There isn't a lot of call for LFE activity in the film, so this is appropriate.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Dolby Digital Trailer

Featurette- Making-of (18:40)

    This Making Of follows the production to the beautiful Yunnan province in China and interviews Director Zhang Yimou and actor Ken Takakura, who each discuss their admiration for one another and their experiences working with amateur actors. This piece is presented in 1.33:1, with optional English or Spanish subtitles.

Trailers (5)

    Unrelated trailers for the films Monster House, Open Season, The Benchwarmers, Yours, Mine & Ours and Zoom.

    The Region 1 NTSC disc (also coded for Region 4) only differs in foreign language dubs (and NTSC formatting, of course).

    The video transfer is excessively grainy.

    The audio transfer is good.

    The extras are brief, but worthwhile.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall