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Released by: Well Go USA
Released on: February 11th, 2014.
Director: Tsui Hark
Cast: Mark Chao, William Feng, Angelababy, Carina Lau, Lin Gengxin
Year: 2013
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The Movie:
A prequel to 2010's Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame, Tsui Hark's 2013 feature Young Detective Dee: Rise Of The Sea Dragon sees Mark Chao take on the lead role originally played by Andy Lau in the first movie. Set a good two decades before the first movie, we're brought back in time to Detective Dee's first case.
The premise? People are being eaten by sea monsters. That's not good. In fact these sea monsters are able to take down entire fleets of ships, which is obviously a problem. There are a few different sea monsters wreaking havoc and so Dee, a well intending young man in town to join the local police force, decides he'd better investigate and see what can be done to curb this evident threat.
The townsfolk have another idea, however - they figure they can appease these monsters by sacrificing Yin (Angelababy), a beautiful woman who really doesn't deserve to die. The woman in charge, Empress Wu (Carina Lau), has called upon a more experienced detective named Yuchi (Feng Shaofeng) to figure out how to stop all this, and should he be unsuccessful, well, he'll be executed for his failure. Soon enough Dee and Yuchi team up and enlist the aid of Dr. Shatuo Zhong (Lin Gengxin) to try and save Yin and figure out how to purge the menace posted by the sea monsters.
Rise Of The Sea Dragon is a decent enough follow up to the first movie but Mark Chao doesn't have the same sort of screen presence as Andy Lau and the movie suffers for it. The script is silly and padded in spots but does offer up some pretty cool action set pieces even if much of it is rendered in fairly obvious computer graphics. Where Lau had a sort of seasoned, worldly Shelock Holmes-esque tone to his take on the character, Chao's take, which obviously uses many of those same traits, just isn't as believable. The movie is able to occasionally exploit this in that Dee's inexperience sometimes leads to trouble, but all too often he's a detective supreme, far too experienced to really make us believe.
The supporting cast is decent enough. Angelababy is plenty easy on the eyes and makes for a perfectly fine damsel in distress while Feng Shaofeng, initially a foil for Dee, winds up making a completely acceptable partner for him. Lin Gengxin, essentially Watson to Chao's Holmes, is also pretty good in his role. There are some problems with the plot but the movie offers up plenty of flashy spectacle and excitement. It's style over substance, but at least it's moderately entertaining style over substance.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Young Detective Dee looks great in this AVC encoded 2.40.1 widescreen 1080p high definition transfer from Vivendi. Depth is impressive here but even more impressive is the color reproduction. There are a lot of scenes here that really pop, that leap off the screen at you and which really show off the cinematography and design work that the film makes such great use of. There are no problems with compression artifacts and detail is generally strong throughout, though some scenes which use heavy CGI aren't quite as sharp looking as others. Some minor banding is noticeable here and there but it's not ever to the point where it becomes distracting. Skin tones look lifelike, black levels are strong and there are no noticeable problems with compression artifacts though some mild edge enhancement isn't too hard to spot if you're looking for it. Texture is great, you can really soak up a lot of the intricacies of the costumes used in the movie, and all in all the movie looks very good in high definition on this release.
The primary audio option on this disc is a Mandarin language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track, though a Mandarin Dolby Digital Stereo option is also provided. Subtitles are provided in English only. Getting back to that lossless track, it sounds pretty good. The film makes great use of the surround channels, especially during the action scenes, so expect a good amount of sound effects to zip past you in addition to some great directionality in terms of how the score is used here. Dialogue stays clean and clear, the subtitles are easy to read and free of any typographical errors, and the levels are properly balanced throughout. All in all, this is a very lively and active mix and a very enjoyable one at that.
Extras are limited to a trailer for the feature and trailers for a few other Well Go USA properties.
The Final Word:
Young Detective Dee: Rise Of The Sea Dragon isn't nearly as good as the first movie, but it's entertaining enough if you're in the mood for pulp style storytelling and don't mind the insane amount of CGI that's gone into this production. It's goofy, almost to a fault, but a few of the action set pieces are absolutely impressive and some of the humor works. Well Go USA's Blu-ray is light on extras but it does look and sound very good indeed.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
