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Released by: Well Go USA
Released on: July 19th, 2016.
Director: Cheang Pou-Soi
Cast: Jing Wu, Tony Jaa, Simon Yam
Year: 2015
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The Movie:
Pou-Soi Cheang, who directed two really strong efforts with Dog Bite Dog in 2006 and Accident in 2009, directs this 'sequel' to Wilson Yip's exceptional 2005 film Kill Zone (or Sha Po Lang in its native China). Really though, it's a sequel in name only. Sure, Simon Yam and Wu Jing showed up in the original and they show up here too, but they play completely different characters and the original's leading man, Donnie Yen, is nowhere to be found.
But let's judge this for what it is, and not for what it isn't.
Chatchai (Tony Jaa), a prison guard, takes his daughter Sa (Unda Kunteera Yhordchanng) out for some fun at a skating rink. Fun turns to terror as he sees that she's bleeding. He rushes her to the hospital only to find out the disease she has - leukemia - is threatening her very life. If they don't find her a bone marrow donor, she'll die. It turns out that there is some hope, a suitable donor is found quite quickly - but when they try to get in touch, no dice.
While all of this is going on, in the surrounding area random people are being kidnapped and their organs being harvested, victims of a crime ring run by a nefarious guy named Ko Chun (Zhang Jin), who just so happens to be a prison warden. In a race against time to save his daughter's life, Chatchai swipes the donor's info and decides to track things down his own way - he is, after all, a complete bad ass - but as luck would have it, the donor, who turns out to be a cop named Kit (Wu Jing), is one of Ko Chun's many imprisoned victims! Not only that, but he was working undercover to try and bust Ko Chun's organization wide open and save the day. Before it's all over, many asses will surely be kicked. Oh, and Uncle Wah (Simon Yam) is running around here too!
And kicked those asses are! There's no shortage of action here. We get some quick superfluous setup info and then the movie hits the ground running. Zhang Jin is a completely one dimensional hiss-worthy bad guy, there are no grey areas to this guy. So that makes it all the more satisfying, and to be honest predictable, when our good guy finally gets to do his thing. And that thing, well, Jaa does it well. He's not an actor of particularly remarkable range but he is amazing in a fight scene and this movie plays to those strengths. When he's emoting and dealing with the turmoil over his daughter, he's not really much to write home about but hot damn can that guy move.
The story isn't particularly logical or realistic but it is perfectly sufficient in terms of how it strings together the series of impressive action and stunt sequences that are the main draw here. This is pretty entertaining stuff, if you're at all interested in Tony Jaa's stuff or even just really intense action/martial arts films in generally its worth seeing, even if smoother plot and more interesting character development would have made this considerably more intelligent than it is.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The AVC encoded 2.39.1 widescreen 1080p high definition picture on this 50GB disc is excellent. Detail is strong, colors are reproduced beautifully but keep in mind that this is a movie that frequently showcases scenes that have a heavily filtered or overly lit look to them (sepia filters and red lights are employed more than once). This can and does occasionally sap some of the fine detail out of the image but it's rare that this happens and was clearly an intentional move on the part of the filmmakers. Black levels are nice and deep throughout the presentation. Generally the transfer excels in areas of both detail and texture. There are no issues at all with dirt, debris or visual detriments of any kind and the disc is well authored, showing no noise reduction or heavy edge enhancement. Outside of some slight shimmer here and there, the movie looks excellent in high definition.
The main audio option on the disc is a Chinese language track provided in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio with removable subtitles available in English only. The lossless track here is a good one, with a lot of impressive channel separation throughout the movie. The score is spread around perfectly with some nice pans thrown in for dramatic effect while bass response is consistent tight and strong. All in all, this is a nice, well directed mix that does a fine job with the movie. A Chinese language DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo mix is also included as are English dubbed tracks in DTS-HD 5.1 and 2.0 flavors.
There are three featurettes here - The Story, The Fights and The Vision - each one clocking in between two and three minutes in length. They're brief, but interesting enough, particularly the one that covers the fight choreography. The disc also includes about sixteen minutes of deleted scenes, a trailer for the feature, trailers for a few other Well Go USA properties, menus and chapter selection. The standard sized Blu-ray case comes housed inside a cardboard foil embossed slipcover.
The Final Word:
Kill Zone 2 may throw logic out the window but it makes up for that with some blisteringly intense sequences of martial arts madness, colorful characters, wild stunt work and some pretty solid style. Well Go USA's Blu-ray release of the film isn't stacked with extras but it does look and sound very good. Check your brain at the door and enjoy!
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
