Empress and the Warriors, An (Kong saan mei yan) (Blu-ray) (2008)

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General		Extras
Category	Action Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2008
Running Time	94:42
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Siu-Tung Ching
Studio Distributor	UFO Icon Entertainment	Starring	Donnie Yen Xiaodong Guo Zhenghai Kou Kelly Chen Leon Lai Weihua Liu Shan Zhang Bo Zhou Jie Yan Daichi Harashima Yi-Yi Yang Zhonghe Zhou
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	Mark Lui

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Cantonese DTS HD High Resolution Audio 5.1 Cantonese Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English (Burned In)	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Hong Kong has produced a spate of excellent period action flicks throughout the latter part of the noughties. House of Flying Daggers, Red Cliff, The Warlords, and Seven Swords among the better of them. As with any such industry trend there have been plenty of also-rans trying to cash in on the same broad style. An Empress and the Warriors is one of those also-rans. The gimmick with this one being that it attempts to mix the Hong Kong rom-com formula into a period action flick. There is arguably nobody whose resume would suggest he was cut out for the job of putting this sort of thing together more than A Chinese Ghost Story director Ching Siu-tung, particularly with Donny Yen and Leon Lai (who together toplined the aforementioned Seven Swords) toplining the bill. Alas, the results are decidedly uneven.

    The film tells the tale of a princess (Kelly Chen) who is thrust into power when her father is killed and his top generals refuse to recognise his chosen successor, a general not of noble birth (Donnie Yen). The princess' cousin, an incompetent general who had plotted the death of the king, hires some shadowy chaps to arrange her demise. The princess is poisoned while out and about, only to be rescued by a doctor (Leon Lai) who lives in what looks like the leftovers of the Swiss family Robinson's abode. Romance ensues before the princess has to return to sort out the chaotic political shenanigans that her disappearance has caused.

    An Empress and the Warriors falls flat on both the comedy and action fronts. The action is of the calibre you would expect from a decent episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, which is enjoyable enough despite being uninspired and generally a bit crap. The comedy is pleasantly light, but terribly forced. The real disappointment is how poorly these two aspects hang together. The two are like chalk and cheese, which makes the movie particularly hard to get in to. The film is certainly not an outright disaster, although anyone looking for anything more than a muddled rom-com will be disappointed.

Video

    The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio in 1080p.

    The video looks good, but is far from reference standard. The image is reasonably sharp and shows no sign of excessive edge enhancement. Moderate grain is noticeable in the image, although it has a reasonably filmic appearance. The colour palette is somewhat drab, but is reasonable in depth and the colour balance is consistent throughout. There is an excellent level of shadow detail visible in the image and the film's dark scenes are visually some of its most impressive.

    There is no sign of compression artefacts or pixelation in the image. Aside from one or two very specks during the opening titles, the image is free from film artefacts.

    The film features forced English subtitles which cannot be turned off. The subtitles are very bright and clear, enough so as to highlight the imperfection of the rest of the image, and consistently placed within the 2.35 frame so as to allow projection to a 2.35:1 screen without losing any content.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The film features a Cantonese DTS HD 5.1 audio track and a Cantonese Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kbps) audio track.

The DTS is a marked improvement on the Dolby Digital, however neither is particularly impressive. There is a momentary audio dropout in the DTS track at around 4:35. The audio is a little choppy over many of the scene transitions in the film (I am unsure of whether this is due to editing of the version we are presented with locally or whether it is down to the sloppy audio production of the film generally).

    Both soundtracks lack fine detail and sound a little muddy. The dialogue is generally audible, but at an uneven level in different scenes. Whilst this will not bother anyone reading the subtitles as much as it would if they were taking the story from the spoken word, it is nonetheless distracting.

    The film features a fairly generic orchestral score, which frequently overpowers the dialogue in the film.

    The film makes chaotic use of the surrounds in the handful of battle scenes and little use otherwise. The subwoofer gets little more than dull thudding to support the action.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The disc opens with trailers for Red Cliff and Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon before playing the feature. The disc features no genuine extras, only these ads.

    The UK Region B Blu-ray appears to be the best edition around for special features as it includes a making of feature and theatrical trailer, however most sites list it as having the incorrect 1.78:1 aspect ratio which is a substantial sacrifice for bonus content. For providing the correct framing of the film, most viewers will be better off with the Australian Region B edition.

    A failed attempt to mix elements of a rom-com into a Chinese period action film.

    The audio is a little uneven. The video is fair, a distinct step up from DVD but far from reference material. There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall