Jet Li's first big star vehicle ended up sitting on the shelf for three years before its eventual release, and the curious might figure out why with 88 Films' Blu-ray of THE MASTER.

Master Tak (Wah Yuen, FIST OF FURY) moved from Hong Kong to the Los Angeles to establish a clinic and martial arts school, but he has suffered disappointment with his star pupil Jet (Li) unable to get a permanent residence and refusing to come illegally. Tak is reduced to using his herbs to treat fighters who have nothing better to do than get in trouble. His luck turns worse when former pupil Johnny (Jerry Trimble, KING OF THE KICKBOXERS) and his gang destroy his practice and try to kill him. Tak is rescued by teenage Anna (Anne Rickets, LETHAL GAME) who has been working as a janitor to pay for her gymnastic training but has just been fired and kicked off the team when her temper gets the better of her. A month later, Jet arrives on a tourist visa to discover banker May (Crystal Kwok, POLICE STORY 2) attempting to repossess Tak's shop space. With no idea what became of his master, Jet tries to reopen the shop to catch up on the overdue loan payments with the hindering help of a trio of Latino gang members who robbed him upon his arrival but were so impressed with his martial arts skills they want to become his pupils to defend themselves against the rival black street gang The Hooks. When Johnny and his gang attack the shop again, Jet learns that Johnny has established his own school – with commercials promising a thirty-day Black Belt – and is destroying any competition. Jet eventually reunites with Tak through Anna and is disappointed to find that Tak will not fight back and wants nothing more to do with him. The police want to catch Johnny in an illegal act, but Jet refuses to get involved until Johnny kidnaps Anna to lure Tak to his death.

Predating the hugely successful Jet Li/Tsui Hark pairing ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA in which Li played the role of master Wong Fei Hung, THE MASTER was completed in 1989 but not released until 1992 under the title WONG FEI HUNG 1992. While it is a hugely entertaining if silly everything-but-the-kitchen-sink piece of eighties action cinema, it is easy to see why Golden Harvest might have had doubts about the film as a Jet Li vehicle – at the time, Li had made only a handful of films for other companies but was better known offscreen as an international Wushu champion – or as a Tsui Hark film since the director was better known for more artsy and ambitious fantasy and action films like ZU: WARRIORS FROM THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN and PEKING OPERA BLUES or as the producer behind the ACES GO PLACES, A BETTER TOMORROW, and A CHINESE GHOST STORY films series. The plot is by-the-numbers but the execution is decidedly not, as Hark throws in Los Angeles street gangs, a dreadlocked shotgun-toting assassin, Johnny's multi-ethnic troupe of fighters, a bus chase, scenes with the police, and other bits of business that there is barely enough time for a romance between Jet and May, angst over the broken master/student relationship between Jet and Tak, and little in the way of a character arc for Anna despite being introduced with a temper problem. The fight scenes are thrilling with some painfully real injuries and some incredibly ambitious stunt work during the climax but the film is lacking the charm that one might find in a Jackie Chan or Sammo Hung vehicle of the time.

Although released in 1992, THE MASTER was not released in the U.K. until 1998 direct-to-video and in the United States from Dimension Films in 2002 (a year after their surprise success with a belated release of Li's IRON MONKEY). Dimension's anamorphic widescreen DVD presented the rescored American version with English 5.1 audio only while Cine Asia's 2005 UK DVD was uncut with 5.1 Cantonese and English audio, a Bey Logan commentary, and three interviews. An English-friendly Hong Kong Blu-ray appeared in 2011 but it was derived from an upscale of a standard definition master while 88 Films' Region B Blu-ray features a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer from a new 2K restoration. The Los Angeles daytime exteriors will always look a bit flat due to the lighting but crispness of detail reveals itself in medium shots and close-ups while the night exteriors pop with neon and gel lighting and the interior scenes look consistently rock solid. As usual, 88 Films have included a multitude of audio options including the original Cantonese mono mix in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 as well as a 2020 remastered mono track and a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 remix with English subtitles and English SDH subtitles for the Cantonese audio. The original export English dub is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 while the newer dub created for Star TV is presented in DTS 5.1. Although the film was shot in English, the English tracks are both dubbed and it really is a toss up as to which is better (or worse). The original Cantonese mono track is the way to go.

The film is accompanied by a pair of audio commentaries. On the first, Hong Kong cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema mention that the film was shot in English with sync sound but Golden Harvest elected to dub the film even in the English version – the first sync-sound Hong Kong film to be released would end up being the later Jackie Chan film SUPERCOP – and that the gymnastic aspect of the film early on that goes nowhere was in vogue with Golden Harvest as they had recently produced the Canadian film FLYING/DREAM TO BELIEVE directed by PROM NIGHT's Paul Lynch and starring Olivia d'Abo (BOLERO) and Keanu Reeves (THE MATRIX). They provide background on the production, comparing the low-key Li to Jackie Chan – they also point out that Li was doubled several times here but also that the actor has never made a secret of it – noting that Wah was usually cast as villains, and that Trimble at the time was a kickboxing champion who had to learn martial arts on the production. The second track features artist R.P. “Kung Fu Bob” O’Brien – designer of some of the new posters and slipcover artwork for 88 Films' Hong Kong titles – who has a jokey delivery but this may be the kind of silly film that warrants it, especially since O'Brien not only has his own production information to convey but also points out evidence of stunts gone wrong and what appear to be cuts within the fight scenes. This is not done in a nitpicky manner so much as to highlight the complexity of the construction of the fight scenes (particularly with Hark's camerawork which is far more fluid than Chan's coverage of his fight scenes).

Video extras start off with a new interview with actor/stuntman John Kreng (14:16) who discusses being bullied in American schools as the son of a Cambodian ambassador at the tail end of the Vietnam war, his mother not being able to afford to send him to martial arts classes so he spent his birthday money each year to take the introductory courses at different school, going into standup comedy and his reel getting to Golden Harvest who gave him the choice between THE MASTER and TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES. He was initially meant to be cast as one of the Latino gang members but expressed his desire to do a fight scene with Li and learn about action choreography. Although his actual role in the film was small, he was on the set everyday as the stunt team graciously showed him their inner workings. Ported over from the UK DVD is an older interview with actor/stuntman John Kreng (17:27) in which he covers a lot of the same information while also noting that he originally retired from martial arts at age twenty-four after a groin injury and had just been cleared by his physical therapist to get back into martial arts when he met Roberta Chow, daughter of Golden Harvest's Raymond Chow and was offered work on THE MASTER. He recalls being unsure whether he should ask Li to autograph his autobiography but Chow encouraged him to bring the book to the set knowing that it would impress the American crew who initially did not distinguish Li from any other Asian martial artist.