HEART OF DRAGON (1985) Region B Blu-ray
Director: Sammo Hung
88 Films

Jackie Chan tries his hands (and fists) at drama with HEART OF DRAGON, on Region B Blu-ray from 88 Films.

Tat (Chan) is a stellar cop but he longs for the sea; unfortunately, he is the sole caregiver for his thirty-year-old brother Dodo (director Sammo Hung) who has the mental age of a child and often gets into trouble with his school-age friends. His decision to join the merchant marines in the hopes of rising through the ranks and one day captaining his own ship alienates his girlfriend Jenny (Emily Chu, A BETTER TOMORROW) who realizes that he wants a babysitter for Dodo, and worse for Dodo whose friends convince him that Tat is abandoning him. When Dodo goes out and tries to find a job, Tat discovers Dodo being exploited and humiliated and realizes that he cannot leave him behind. Taking a job on the SWAT Team just as they are about to bust businessman Mr. Kim (James Tien, THE BIG BOSS) as a diamond smuggler. Tat gives chase to Pang's supplier (Hoi Mang, ZU: WARRIORS FROM THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN) who mistakes Dodo for a cop and drops the diamonds which Dodo and his buddy Heung (Ka-Ho Lee, YOUNG BRUCE LEE) hide, with Dodo sworn to secrecy. Unfortunately, Heung's big brother and Tat's best friend Kenny (Tai-Bo, POLICE STORY) discovers the diamonds and his selfishness places Dodo in danger and Tat must break the law – with a little help from his own teammates – to save his brother.

Promoted as a change of pace for Chan, HEART OF DRAGON is a rather uneven effort with its heart in the right place and Hung willing to play pathetic – he not only gets ridiculed by potential employers and beaten by restaurant workers who mistake him for an adult attempting to dine and dash but also emotionally abused by his own private tutor (Anthony Chan, TWIN DRAGONS) – and Chan getting to stretch his acting muscles. The problem is that Hung and company know they must concede to the expectations of the audience for action – especially in the version prepared for Japanese co-producer/distributor Shochiku – and the set-pieces here feel more obligatory than in some of Chan's other attempts to diversify his filmography like MIRACLES (or even DRAGONS FORVER). After an opening action scene, the film then spends most of the running time on drama and leaves the setup for the thriller half of the story until more than half-way through the film. The climactic action sequence, however, is well-worth seeing starting with a large-scale police chase and plenty of car and motorcycle stunts (and some accidental crashes left in the film) and culminating in a thrilling construction site fight played more for action than comedy (with Chan's SWAT officer impaling criminals with pickaxes and machetes). From POLICE STORY onwards the same year, Chan maintained a better balance of humor and action (and even more successfully did drama with CRIME STORY), while Hung's subsequent directorial effort and star vehicle EASTERN CONDORS was a more compelling merging of action and drama.

Unreleased theatrically in the United States – and released directly to VHS in the U.K. first under its Japanese title THE FIRST MISSION and then as HEART OF THE DRAGON, HEART OF DRAGON first came to the U.S. as a Tai Seng laserdisc from a PAL-converted master with Cantonese and English tracks (although the subtitles were burned into the video) followed by a Tai Seng DVD in 2000 featuring a non-anamorphic master and Cantonese and Mandarin audio. Fortune Star's anamorphic remaster was subsequently released on DVD by Fox in 2003 with Cantonese and English DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks as well as two deleted fight scenes. The aforementioned fight scenes – a fight between Tat and the criminal staff of a Methadone clinic and a parking lot battle between Tat and some thugs who were harassing waitress Jenny, as well as the aforementioned pickaxe bit during the climactic fight – were not included in the Hong Kong cut or the English export version since Hung believed they hurt the tone of the film. They were, in fact, produced for the Japanese version of the film (which was apparently released in that country in Cantonese with Japanese subtitles since that is the configuration of the Japanese import laserdisc which featured the longest version available). The film's first English-friendly Blu-ray release in Hong Kong turned out to be an upscale (as were a number of Fortune Star's earlier HD masters) while the Japanese and German Blu-rays featured a real HD master of the longer cut but were not English-friendly.

88 Films' Blu-ray comes from a new 2K scan of the original camera negatives and features the Hong Kong cut (91:24) with Cantonese and English DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 original mono and optional English subtitles (as well as an additional English subtitle track for just the credit and onscreen Chinese text for the English track), as well as the aforementioned Japanese cut (99:11) also from a new 2K master. The film looked a little hazy on DVD with some diffusing during the exterior day scenes and some grit during the optical credits, but here colors of the wardrobe pop (Chan is outfitted in a bright yellow suit in the middle of a jungle during training maneuvers) and the more moodily lit interior scenes not look considerably more considered in the use of light and shadow (particularly since the cinematographer seems to want to pull as much emotion out of the blank faces of Chan and Hung during the more music-dominated dramatic pauses). With release like DRAGONS FORVER and HEART OF DRAGON, 88 Films is taking as rigorous an approach to their Asian titles as competitor Eureka, and both are doing what Dragon Dynasty should have done with their American special editions. Besides the original mono on the Hong Kong version, the Japanese cut has an impressive array of audio options: (1) a Cantonese DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono track featuring Cantonese dialogue but the alternate score of the Japanese soundtrack which also replaces Man Yee Lam's theme song and another vocal by Chan in the film; (2) a Cantonese DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 featuring the original Hong Kong score and aforementioned songs with just dialogue and effects during the parking lot scene; (3) a Cantonese DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 track with the Hong Kong soundtrack incorporating the Japanese soundtrack only during the fight scene); (4) a Cantonese DTS 1.0 track featuring the Hong Kong soundtrack but the Japanese replacement songs; and finally (5) a hybrid track featuring the film's English dub in DTS 1.0 that reverts to Cantonese for the extra Japanese scenes. There are also separate English subtitle options for each of the five tracks enabled by default.

The first two extras shed some light into how the film was promoted in Japan by co-producer/distributor Shochiku as a "trademark action film from Jackie Chan" in spite of Hung and Chan elsewhere describing it as change of pace (Hung is even heard disingenuously claiming he is not fighting in the film because he can no longer keep up with the others). The first is "The First Mission" (15:21) which originally used at a pre-release event screening at Shinjuku Shochiku in August 1985 and the other "The First Mission" (48:41) is a making-of featurette fro the same raw footage shot by a Japanese television crew during the making of the film. Of course, it focuses almost entirely on the stunt work and action scenes, revealing a motorcycle crash that was kept in the film and a scene of a performer practicing a jump from a window and bouncing from a canopy to the cement below several times before overshooting the canopy during the first take and seriously injuring himself (requiring months of hospitalization). Ported over from older DVD releases of the film are a series of interviews. Chan (9:25) stresses the fact that his is an actor as well as a martial artist and expresses his admiration for Hung as a director, while actor Rocky Lai (GOD OF GAMBLERS) in his interview (10:03) recalls the many injuries resulting from the film's grenade sequence (more from the stuntmen landing on each other on the padding and then stepping on each other getting back up).

In a pair of interview with Hung (7:24 and 11:22) – the latter from the UK Hong Kong Legends DVD – he recalls not liking the original script, stopping production after the first few days, and having a week to rewrite it. While it was a drama with Chan, neither Hung nor his character was originally in the film's first incarnation. More interesting is the one with cinematographer Arthur Wong (15:10) who speaks of his admiration for American cinema and how being knowledgeable about it is an advantage since some directors talk of their visual ideas in terms of reference other films. He also discusses his visual scheme for the film, using largely static compositions for the film's drama and switching to handheld and mobile camera for the action scenes. The disc also includes the Hong Kong theatrical trailer (5:25), an English trailer (1:22) under the title RAGING FORCE (HEART OF DRAGON remains as a subtitle beneath it although promotional materials show that the film was also marketed internationally under the Japanese title THE FIRST MISSION), a Japanese theatrical trailer (2:35), and a pair of Japanese teasers (1:04 and 1:30), as well as Fortune Star's newer English-language trailer (1:53). The disc is housed with a reversible cover with alternative Hong Kong poster artwork and new artwork from R.P. “Kung Fu Bob” O’Brien while the limited first print run includes a limited edition o-card slipcover and booklet notes by James Oliver also featuring rare stills and lobby cards from the film. (Eric Cotenas)

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