HEROIC DUO

Directed by Benny Chan
Written by Alan Yuen & Adrian Kwan
Produced by Benny Chan
Cinematography by Anthony Poon
Music by Tommy Wai
Cast: Leon Lai, Ekin Cheng, Francis Ng, Karena Lam, Xu Jing-Lei, Raymond Wong, Samuel Pang, Anson Leung & Rico Kwok

2003/100 mins/Color/DTS
2.35:1 anamorphic/Cantonese/Hong Kong/NTSC Region 1

Review from Tartan US DVD

Officer Ken (Ekin Cheng) is one tough cop but this time, he will need help to solve a very strange case. One of the office's top police officer set all their data files on fire, the problem is that he doesn't even remember doing it. It looks like he was hypnotize. Soon after, he commits suicide. Ken seeks the help of renowned hypnotist and crimal Jack Lai (Leon Lai). Together they form a very unlikely alliance to find and stop a mastermind of hypnotism.

Forget about the rather lame storyline, its only an excuse to create an action packed movie. Also don't expect anything new since we've seen movies like this many times. It is full of clichés but still, HEROIC DUO was lotta fun, most of the stunts were pretty incredible, there's almost always action and plot twists to keep the interest going. The scene I liked the most was the chase on the rooftop. Director Benny Chan is familiar with the action genre, he previously gave us BIG BULLET, WHO AM I? and GEN-X COPS.

Tartan released HEROIC DUO as part of their Asia Extreme collection. The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio and it is anamorphic. The image looks good but nothing spectacular, the colors are nicely saturated. Unfortunately, there's a very annoying and distrating white line at the top of the letterbox mask. Hopefully this will be fixed with future pressing. We get the choice of three audio tracks; DTS 5.1 Surround , Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround. All of them are loud, clear and crisp and in Cantonese. Don't worry though, we get the choice of easy to read optional English or Spanish subtitles.

In the extra department, we get an interesting 8 minutes interview with director Benny Chan and a 4 minutes interview with fight choreographer Stephen Tung. Both are interesting as the give details about the making-of the film. There's also a nicely put together 13 minutes Making-of featurette with lots of behind-the-scenes footage, interview and more. There's the usual 'Photo Gallery' which consist of stills from the film and trailers for other Tartan release such as DOPPELGANGER, PHONE, A TALE OF TWO SISTERS and OLD BOY. The movie is separated in 16 chapters, features animated menus, comes with a 4 pages booklet and in a keep case with itself comes in a paperboard package.

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Review by Kim Dubuisson. All Right Reserved. 2005. ©

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