God of War - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

God of War

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

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Movie
Chinese history and epic war films are a bit of a passion hobby of mine. One of the reasons I love Well Go USA so much is their dedication to bringing over as many Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Thai films as they possibly can. It used to be that all we had to tide us over was imports of Shaw Brothers films (which we need more of on Blu-ray), or hacked up films that Weinstein and MGM would dub over and dice up to be more acceptable to American audiences. With the floodgates comparatively opened up with the introduction of the, now defunct, Dragon Dynasty lineup, as well as Well Go USA’s continued support there are now more of these epics coming into the U.S. (unmolested that is) than any time in cinema history. This brings with it negatives as well as the obvious positives. With so many Chinese titles coming across, you have more of a chance of seeing a boring or weaker film than you once did. The cream of the crop is no longer priority number one, but filling in cracks and seams with any film possible. Naturally you’re going to have some weaker ones with all of the good ones, and God of War is the epitome of a middle of the road Chinese epic.

The opening title scroll mentions that the Ming Dynasty troops were fending off Japanese pirates (some of which where Chinese conscripts and recruits, a little fact that seems to be lost in the movie besides a quick quip at the beginning), and having a devil of a time doing so. Thousands of pirates were coming in and plundering the area, using natural resources and Chinese structures to hold off the army’s advance. General Yu Dayou (Sammo Hung) repeatedly tries to attack the Japanese pirates every day, only to repeatedly get his butt whipped by the entrenched men. It takes the skill and cunning of a replacement general by the name of Qi Jiquang (Vincent Zhao) to actually use the enemy’s complacency against them and come out with a major victory, hereby bringing dishonor to General Yu Dayou’s honor, and gaining him a seat in prison for his failure.

For being a big name actor and prominently displayed on the cover of the movie, Sammo Hung’s Yu Dayou gets bumped off to the side for large sections of the movie and seems kind of a bumbling fool. The people around him praise the man’s honor, his skill, and his legendary fighting abilities, but the powers that be seemed bound and determined to shuffle him off to the side for most of the movie (except for a really neat bo staff fight sequence between him and Qi Jiquang after he gets out of prison). After recouping from the losses, Qi makes a decided effort to take care of these pirates once and for all. Recruiting hundreds of peasants around the Ming empire, he builds a strange army based of no policital or high ranking members, and trains them to become his personal weapon against the last of the pirates. However, the up and coming general may have bit off more than he can chew. The pirates are lead by a military strategist (who constantly recites Sun Tzu’s Art of War) and he has brought back 20,000 pirates to wipe out Qi Jiquang once and for all. Now it’s a bloody fight to the finish where only one general will survive.

Gordon Chan seems intent on blending elements of Red Cliff and other war epics, with the high flying martial arts and blade action of your average Kung Fu movie. The movie opens and closes with some seriously epic battle scenes that combine Japanese Samurai sword fighting, as well as traditional Chinese swordplay and battle tactics in a really nice combination. The blood soaked battlefield gives us plenty of eye candy to watch, and the choreography is well done. The only problem is that these battle scenes are broken up with long “talky” portions of the movie that seem to hold no real relevant pertinence to the film. Especially the scenes with Qi and his wife. This pads the film out to a full 2 hours and 9 minutes, out of which a good 30 could have been trimmed and still made sense. This makes it rather frustrating to feel for all the characters, and get involved with their tribulations as the viewer is constantly shifting between mindless action and scenes that have you scratching your head at their importance to the plot at hand.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

Wow, just wow. This has to be one of the best looking encodes that Well Go USA has pulled off to date. God of War’s 2.39:1 framed AVC encode is nothing short of jaw dropping, as the digital film eeks every last bit of detail out of the lusciously decorated film. I can’t verify with any degree of certainty, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was mastered with a 4K DI as the detail is jaw dropping. Watch the opening battle with Yu Dayou leading the assault on the pirates stronghold. The battlefield is riddled with the bright red of tassels and blood all over the place, combined with deep earthy tones of the muddy field and the splashes of gold and blue from the military uniforms. You can see each and every pore on a character’s face, as well as the sweat and grime from being mired in battle for so long. The disc seems to show no apparent banding to my eyes, and black levels are deep and inky without sacrificing shadow detail in the slightest. I’m usually expecting at least SOME noticeable artifacting from Well Go USA, but this is easily one of their better releases to date.





Audio:

Well Go USA’s DTS:X audio mix is just as stunning and demo worthy as the video is, bringing with it a wildly enveloping track that makes full use of the object based audio capabilities. The opening battle is chaotic and insane, with mid air explosions that rock the high end of the speaker system, and deep guttural explosions that permeate the sound stage with powerful LFE. Voices are well placed in the front of the room, while the surrounds are given ample opportunity to shine with footsteps shifting from one end of the room to another, or the whistle of arrow shrieking from the front of the room to the back. It’s a great track that really pushes the limits of the DTS:X capabilities with an array of scenes that are wildly kinetic, or soft and serene, but each filled with all sorts of nuances and shifts in directionality. EXCELLENT track.








Extras:

• Making Of
• Trailer

Final Score: ​

God of War is an up and down sort of film, with high points and low points throughout the 2 hour plus epic martial arts/war film. The battles are incredibly well done and show off some of the best audio that the film has to offer, while many of the “talky” portions of the movie really drag at the lower end of the enjoyable spectrum. While it pleases in many ways, I still found the movie just right in the middle of the road as it couldn’t rise above the sluggish parts, and the action was too good to be really bad at the end of the day. It doesn’t help matters much that the audio and video specs are nothing short of eye and ear candy with “demo material” written all over them. Extras are near non existant though, and I would still have to say that God of War is still relegated to a rental status.




Technical Specifications:

Starring: Sammo Hung, Yasuaki Kurata, Wenzhuo Zhao
Directed by: Gordon Chan
Written by: Frankie Tam, Maria Wong
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: Mandarin: DTS:X (DTS-HD MA 7.1 Core), Mandarin DD 2.0
Studio: Well Go USA
Rated: NR
Runtime: 128 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: Obtober 17th, 2017

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Rental

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I will catch this on amazon prime/netflix once available.

 

[Jack]

Hmmm, ok will put on the rental Queue