Interview

Lau-Kar Leung directs Legend of Drunken Master. The film stars Jackie Chan, Ti Lung, Anita Mui, Lau Kar-Leung, Andy Lau, and Felix Wong. ***

Jackie Chan plays Wong Fei Hung, a martial artist who stumbles into the matters of the British Consul, who is a crooked individual using his men to smuggle ancient Chinese artifacts out of the country. Chan’s character battles these henchmen using the Drunken Boxing fighting style, quickly finding that he becomes better in a fight when he drinks alcohol – but after drinking too much he loses his abilities. It’s up to him to find a way to make the fighting style work for him and recover the artifacts, putting this evil scheme to a halt. ***

There really isn’t much of a story to this movie – what little there is just serves the purpose of creating reasons for action scene after action scene. What would have failed as a movie due to its lack of depth is redeemed by Jackie Chan, who makes this his own movie. ***

When it comes to martial arts cinema, there is perhaps no name in the world, past or present, better known than Jackie Chan. This man has no shortage of talent, but he also brings a light-hearted sense of humor to the genre – something other entries and actors in the genre are lacking. Legend of Drunken Master is a textbook example of the standard Jackie Chan movie – there’s not much depth, but there’s action and humor galore around every corner, so does it really matter? ---

Image and Sound:

Ugh. This transfer, to put it bluntly and to the point, is one of the worst I have seen on the Blu-Ray format to date. Apparently the people at Buena Vista were busy experimenting with drunken fighting when they should have been remastering this disc! There is a ton of dirt and grain in the image – and this is OVERWHELMING grain, not the nice, minimal classy amount of grain that gives a movie a film-like appearance or the kind that gives a movie a gritty sense of realism. The picture is soft throughout and, as if it didn’t already look bad enough, has been subjected to noise reduction. It’s pretty rare you have to suffer through heavy unintended grain and noise reduction alike in the same transfer! Audio is no better, with only the English track getting the TrueHD treatment. Why does Buena Vista insist on giving lackluster audio to the native language tracks? Quite honesty, video-wise, this may be the ugliest Blu-Ray transfer this reviewer has seen all year.

One 7-minute interview with Jackie Chan. That’s it. Why couldn’t they get the Chan Man to do a commentary? After the terrible transfer, I expected Buena Vista to redeem themselves with a wealth of bonus material – didn’t happen.

Final Words: