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Released by: Well Go USA
Released on: August 2nd, 2016.
Director: Ding Sheng
Cast: Andy Lau, Liu Ye, Wang Qingyuan
Year: 2015
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The Movie:
Based on the actual kidnapping of actor Wu Ruofu that happened in Beijing in 2004, director Ding Sheng's Saving Mr. Wu starts off with a scene where Wu (Andy Lau) leaves a restaurant with an investor where they've just been celebrating the success of their latest project. As they leave, they're approached by some police officers who want to question Wu about his supposed involvement in a hit and run, but he knows something isn't right. When Wu calls them on it, he's promptly beaten and bound and then kidnapped.
When Wu finds himself holed up in their compound he realizes he's not the only abductee - a man named Xiao Dou (Cai Lu) is there too, kidnapped because the hoods, led by Zhang Hua (Wang Qingyuan), figured if he's got a nice car, he must be rich. Zhang Hua then holds both men for ransom in hopes of using the ransom money to better equip his team for a high stakes robbery he intends to attempt. Wu tries to talk his way out of it but soon realizes that these guys have no intentions of letting him go. If they get the ransom money, they're just going to kill him. Meanwhile, the cops - Xing Feng (Liu Ye) and Cao Gang (played by the real life Wu Ruofu!) - try to put the pieces of the case together in hopes of preventing the killings.
Director Ding Sheng (probably best known for directing Little Big Soldier and Police Story: Lockdown) gives us all we need to know a little at a time through a series of flashbacks that do a pretty solid job of balancing out the scenes where Wu deals with his captors with the exposition needed for this story to work. It might be a clichéd way to get the story across, but it works well here and it never upsets the tone or the pace of the movie whenever we're pulled into Wu's past or tossed into the police station with he and the cops to sort this mess out. The narrative is tense and gripping and it is told with a nice mix of efficiency and style. As such, the film is polished enough in its style to appeal to our eyes, but quick enough in its pacing that it's never dull.
The performances here are also very good. Cai Lu, Liu Ye and the actual Wu Roufu are very good in their supporting parts but the movie really belongs to Andy Lau and Wang Qingyuan. Lau is great here - he plays his character as smart, but also when the story calls for it, as increasing desperate. He puts a lot into making his character's plight believable and he pulls it off admirably. Wang Qingyuan, on the other hand, is completely diabolical as the lead villain. We know he's unhinged and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that he has no interest in seeing Wu returned alive. He comes close more than once to going over the top but never quite does it, delivering an intense performance where it could have come off as hammy. The two skilled actors play off of each other here as they share quite a bit of screen time. These scenes are the highlights of the film in a lot of ways, it's really just awesome to see them work together here. It's here, in these scenes, more than anywhere else that the film's tension stems. Don't go into this expecting a typical action movie, it doesn't really work on that level - but if carefully crafted characters and skilled performances in a story that focuses on tension over violence sounds like your thing, give this one a watch. It's very well done.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The AVC encoded 2.35.1 widescreen 1080p high definition picture on this disc is excellent. Detail is strong, colors are reproduced beautifully but keep in mind that this is a movie that occasionally uses scenes that have a filtered look to them, clearly intentional 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 Mandarin language track provided in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio with removable subtitles available in English or Chinese. The lossless 5.1 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 Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix is also included.
Extras start off with a behind the scenes featurette called Making Mr. Wu broken up into four parts - Andy Lau, Director Ding Sheng, Liu Ye and Wang Qianyun. These are a little promotional in nature but they do offer some welcome background information on the actual events that inspired the movie as well as some pretty interesting behind the scenes footage. Each piece runs about three minutes so they're pretty quick.
Aside from that we get a selection of nine deleted scenes, a trailer for the feature, menus and chapter selection. Trailers for a few other Well Go USA properties play before the main menu loads.
The Final Word:
Saving Mr. Wu was a pleasant surprise - a cracking true crime thriller ripe with tension and a great performance from Andy Lau. Well Go USA's Blu-ray isn't stacked with extras but the featurette is interesting and the technical presentation is top notch.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
