The Adventurers - Limited Edition

Andy Lau (Infernal Affairs) is Wai Lok-yan, professional badass extraordinaire. As a child, he sees his family murdered in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge under the orders of the wicked Ray Lui. The orphaned Wai Lok-yan moves to Thailand and grows up to become a fighter pilot. It’s not long upon meeting him as an adult before he finds out that Ray is in town and has become a billionaire from selling weapons. Wai attempts an assassination, but due to the sheer amount of bodyguards surrounding him, he’s unsuccessful and takes a bullet to the gut.

The Adventurers follows Wai-Lok Yan as he pursues Ray, undercover, under the new assumed identity Mandy Chan. With the assistance of the CIA in the United States, he becomes a rival gang boss, in order to get closer to Ray’s daughter, Crystal. If you’ve ever seen a movie before, you know it’s just a matter of time before the two fall in love. Complication after complication ensues, and Lok-Yan/Chan has to balance the love of his life with a bloody quest for revenge.

If you give The Adventurers even a single second of thought, it falls apart. It doesn’t not hold up under any scrutiny whatsoever. The plot itself is nothing more than a series of events—any exciting ideas director Ringo Lam and his team conceived of, it went into the film. So, you’re left with this movie that’s filled with daring aerial stunts with jets and helicopters, fused with a gritty undercover story in a world  of organized crime, with nonstop shootouts and machine guns blazing. Somehow, and perhaps this will puzzle me for the rest of my life, it works. It simply works.

Maybe it’s because The Adventurers never makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously, or because Ringo Lam takes the story just seriously enough. He seems to understand his audience will only invest their time if their properly entertained, so the maximum entertainment level is cranked up to the max. There’s never a dull moment. When the plot does need to slow down, occasionally, for a breather, Lam does what he can to interject energy into it, whether through inventive camerawork, humor or through good old fashioned pulpy dialogue to propel the whole thing forward.

My familiarity with Hong Kong cinema is admittedly limited, so seeing a movie like this is a real treat for me. As far as Ringo Lam’s filmography, this is only the third film of his that I’ve seen (the others being City on Fire and Twin Dragons), but it was fun seeing a stacked case of actors I’ve recognized from other films like Rosamund Kwan (co-starring in a number of Jackie Chan and Jet Li flicks). Whether you’re a seasoned veteran of Hong Kong films or a relative newb like I am, The Adventurers is sure to give you a good time, provided you don’t think too hard about it. The wonderful pleasure of a movie like this is in its ability to allow you to turn your brain off and enjoy the story that does whatever it wants, goes wherever it wants and never, ever stops to second guess itself.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
The Adventurers swings into action on a single-disc Blu-ray release housed in a standard case with a removable slipcover. The case and the slip contain alternate poster artwork covers, while the reverse side of the case has a screenshot from the film. Also included is a 12-page booklet with an excellent, informative essay by Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park.

For this release, Eureka Entertainment has used a brand-new 2K scan of The Adventurers that is nothing short of awesome. Details are razor sharp and colors are balanced with a naturalistic hue. The film can, at times, be quite colorful, but with this transfer it never looks oversaturated or garish. Throughout, there’s a fine layer of film grain on the presentation, faithful to its filmic origins and the restoration team has wisely not used any DNR filter (or if they did, it was used subtly). All in all, The Adventurers looks fantastic and outside of a full-fledged 4K treatment with HDR grading, I can’t imagine it looking much better than this.

Viewers have three different audio options to choose between, and for this review I went through all of them so that you don’t have to. Each option has its own strengths and weaknesses so there’s no clear winner, just personal preference.

First up is the original, unrestored LPCM stereo Cantonese audio track which is fun! It’s fun to listen to, but it sounds terrible. Muffled, muddy, just… it’s fun to include as an extra, for funsies, to have sub-VHS quality audio just to see how much work went into this release, but on its own it’s nothing more than a curio.

Next up, the restored LPCM stereo Cantonese audio track, which is the above track, but cleaned up and made listenable. This is for audio purists and gives the most accurate representation of its original theatrical sound mix with some polish and restoration. It’s balanced very well, with effects and music that pack a wallop, without ever overpowering the dialogue.

However, and as “unfaithful” as it may be, my personal favorite option was the DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround mix. It basically sounds like one of those old-style 2.0 surround mixes from the early days of Laserdisc, where every sound effect, sans dialogue, is matrixed into the rear speakers. If someone puts down a pen, it clicks in a 360-degree soundscape. It’s an upgraded version of that, however there is SOME movement across the soundstage, where some new mixing was implemented, like when a jet shrieks overhead or helicopter travels from front to back. Overall, the precision and oomph of effects through the subwoofer is better utilized here. It’s really well done and a lot of fun.

In terms of special features, there aren’t a lot here, but that’s okay. The Adventurers is an eclectic title, but there are some interviews, a trailer and, of course, the booklet that is included in the disc’s case.

• Two Adventurers (HD 21:26) – Interview with author Gary Bettinson on Ringo Lam and Andy Lau
• Writing for the Dark-Faced God (HD 14:26) – Interview with screenwriter Sandy Shaw
• Trailer

Ringo Lam’s 1995 explosive 1995 Hong Kong action flick The Adventurers comes to Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment in a deluxe release that’s as awesome and over-the-top as the movie itself. The movie is wonderfully ludicrous and loaded with twist upon twist that match the sheer oneupmanship of its action sequences. Armed with awesome A/V stats and some nice supplements (plus a booklet!), The Adventurers is Highly Recommended for most folks, but in truth it’s probably a must-own for Hong Kong cinema connoisseurs.