Another Meltdown

I heard of this movie through the 'coming attractions' list on the end of the new Director's Cut DVD of 'Drive' by Steve Wang (Region 2 only, sorry!). Get ready - a Hong Kong movie that has good plot, great characters and depth. It's the perfect antidote to overblown, over-hyped American/British films that take 3 hours and $3million to make a lot of noise about nothing. Chiu Man Chuk (his Cantonese name) is Officer Dong, transferred to the (fictional) Russian state of Lavernia for disobeying orders while rescuing hostages. He meets up with his best mate Andrew who takes life a little less seriously than he does. Dong is there five minutes and manages to arrest the leading criminal in the subway, featuring the first of many amazing fight sequences between the two. What follows is a passionate tale of second chances, betrayal, heroes and friendship. A quietly amazing film. The Honk Kong Legends Region 2 DVD has some real goodies too - an interview with Chiu Man Chuk, his Wu Shu demonstration, photo galleries, a music promo for the release, more coming attractions from the distribution company, biographies and audio options. A few scenes are grainy but it doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the film,and the sound is obviously great. It only comes in 2CH not 5.1 Dolby sound, but hey, it still beats a VHS! WATCH THIS IN CANTONESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES! If you choose the dubbed version Officer Dong is American and it ruins the whole style of the film. Don't miss Chiu Man Chuk's performance - be ready to put him on your list of top ten actors. What about the fact he doesn't speak English? Well I don't speak Cantonese but there are less people in the English-speaking world than there are in the Chinese dialects region! Rent it, buy it, just get hold of it! At 87 minutes its well worth the investment!

So first of all they make up a country and try to put all of this political drama into it. Yeah, that is going to fly. It is also just great that the main white Russian character who is supposed to be doing dirty government dealings is obviously not even an actor and seems to have gotten a part in the movie because he probably financed it or something. There is a great fight at the start between Vincent Zhao and the main villain. Don't ecpect too much goodness in the fights though. I thought I was going to be able to get past the horribleness of this movie and watch some great fights but it just turns into people flying around and the director putting in about 5 cuts per doesn't help. There is a great fight where the villain takes out everybody in the jail's shower but that is seriously about it. Xin Xin Xiong has a nice cameo at the beginning but it was way too short and was one of the 4 scenes that I actually liked. Shu Qi is about as underused as possible and just adds to the horribleness of this movie. The final fight scene almost got turned off by me but I struggled through it and can honestly say that this is one of the worst movies you will ever see. I promise.

Unlike Sony Pictures past releases like Jet Li's Contract Killer and Meltdown, Another Meltdown(Blacksheep Affair) actually has a Chinese language track and seems to be uncut. Way to go, thanks for waiting until releasing a bad movie to actually give movie fans a good version.

The writing in this movie is horrible! The action sequences are good - not great though. I love HK action movies but don't waste your time watching this as there are much better movies out there. If you insist on watching it, I suggest fast forwarding through and just watching the action sequences.