Warriors Of Heaven And Earth (Blu-ray)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

At times, it's not clear why the female is in this film. She's one of two voiceover narrators (the other being Lai Xi), and we're told that her father and Lai Xi were good friends. But she truly does just seem to be along for the ride. In terms of the film's structure, that and a mystical element that comes in near the end in a kind of jarring way are the only missteps. As for the screenplay itself, like American Westerns there's not much in the way of character development. The focus is on the iconic--the traits that make these men warriors of the legendary sort. As a historical epic and Far Eastern Western, it's pretty successful . . . until you find your head snapped by some anachronistic lines that seem to have been written by Tony Soprano. "You're busting my balls," one guy says. In the 8th century? Same with "You better not chicken out," or a moment when everyone crosses their swords in a circle like hands in a football huddle and breaks with NFL crispness.

But there are enough interesting and fun things going on here--especially for lovers of Westerns--that the flaws are easy to overlook.

Video:
The SD version looked pretty decent already, but the Blu-ray is still an upgrade. The 2.40:1 aspect ratio allows for the same kind of sweeping panoramic shots as we're used to in epic Westerns. The colors seem well saturated and the black levels allow for strong contrasts even when the scenes are tinged by desert drabness.

Audio:
The audio is also quite good, with Mandarin PCM 5.1 uncompressed audio the featured soundtrack, and additional audio options in French and English 5.1. With so many subtitle options (English, English SDH, French, Arabic, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Greek, Hindi, Dutch, and Turkish) there's really no excuse for not watching this in the original language--which, as far as I'm concerned, is the only way to enjoy a film like this. One comment on the sound, though. Curiously, most of the sound emanates from the front center and rear speakers, with the left/right main speakers not noticeably involved. I don't think it's a tracking problem, but rather a reflection of the fact that so much of the action is centralized, while the rear speakers pick up the ambient sounds.

Extras:
Not much here in the way of extras. There's a pre-release promo featurette on "The Making of 'Warriors of Heaven and Earth'" and a music video by Jolin Tsai, "Warriors of Peace." The making-of is all surface fluff, unfortunately, though your most basic questions will probably be answered.

Bottom Line:
"Warriors of Heaven and Earth" is a solid entry in the genre of Far Eastern Westerns, with strong acting, a decent-enough script, some fun recognizable conventions, and action that's choreographed not to be poetic, but to reflect the grit of the Chinese West of the 8th century.