Fearless Blu-ray

Fearless

 (2006)

Action | Drama | History



The son of a great fighter who did not wish for his child to follow in his footsteps, bullied Huo Yuanjia resolves to teach himself how to fight anyway--and win. Years of training enable him to ace match after match in his home region of Tianjin. But as his fame as a martial arts master grows, so does his pride. After an ill-advised fight leads to another Master's death, members of Huo's family are slain in revenge. Grieving and ashamed, Huo wanders the country in shock. Near death, he is rescued by women from an idyllic village, and is offered simple kindness and generosity that help him heal and regain his equilibrium over a period of several years. Huo realizes that the future of martial arts lies in sportsmanship and not brutality, and he rejoins society to apply what he has learned. Returning to Tianjin, Huo takes steps to come to terms with his past and restore his family's name. His evolving, graceful "Mizong (Missing) Fist" method of fighting brings Huo renewed success, and he forms the progressive Jingwu Sports Federation. Taking note, duplicitous members of the Foreign Chamber of Commerce engineer a Shanghai tournament pitting Huo against four fighters, each representing the major foreign powers in China. Huo commits to the bout and faces off against, respectively, a British boxer, a Spanish swordsman, a Belgian soldier and a Japanese martial artist. What happened that day in 1910 has never been, and will never be, forgotten in China.

For more details about Fearless on Blu-ray, see the Fearless Blu-ray Review

Starring: Jet Li, Betty Sun, Dong Yong, Shidou Nakamura, Collin Chou
Director: Ronny Yu

Fearless Blu-ray, Video Quality

 


Fearless graces its way into the Bluray format in a beautiful 1080p/VC-1 video encode, framed at a wide 2:40:1 original aspect ratio. You have a choice to view the Directors cut, the theatrical and unrated cuts via seamless branching. This movie is just gorgeous to watch, excelling in every film related aspect possible. The source is absolute pristine, clean, and first rate without a single film related issue visually found. Film grain is well managed, but always apparent giving this film a very organic looking quality that I love about film. Detail is first rate, revealing everything caught within lens sight with exceptional clarity and depth. Colors are deeply saturated with no chroma noise or bleeding to be seen. The use of color in this film is highly stylized, but never being distractive, or taking away a single thing visually. Images always looked natural, down to skin tones, food, clothes, trees, water, no matter what the camera captures it looks totally natural. Blacks are inky deep, stable, with no crush to found. Contrast can be at times extreme in the brightest whites, but overall very good if not excellent. This film visual dynamic is astounding, with quite of bit of punch delivered in almost every scene. I saw no instances of edge enhancement, but what keeps me from giving this film a perfect score is a brief bit of aliasing/moiré on some clothing with tightly knit patterns on them. Fearless looks positively beautiful on Bluray, and if you were not knick picking, perfect. I would recommend however (like I would on all videos) that you watch this film in total darkness, any source of ambient light can wash out detail in the darkest scenes, and quite frankly there are many of them in this movie.

Fearless Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 


Universal has produced a masterpiece of a 5.1 Dts-HD Master Audio sound track encoded at a full 24/48 kHz that I would call a must listen for any student of film audio mixing. This sound track is so nimble its not funny; being subtle, complex, dynamically aggressive, sparse, dense, quiescent, and suddenly loud and powerful at any point in the film. As natural as the video looks, the sound is equally natural sounding, but with just a nudge of processing and punch on certain sound effects. The sound is open, midrange sweet, lower mids and bass tight and full, and there is just a slight roll off of the upper frequencies that allow the sound to be played louder, be keeps it from having that last bit of air that some of the best sound tracks exhibit. The LFE is used very effectively, is powerful, tight, articulate, and room filling. The full 360 degree sound stage is highly layered, but starting from right at the front of my speakers, extending to the front wall, from side wall to side wall, and from floor to ceiling. Sound effects, dialog and music are embedded into the huge sound field which makes you feel like you are in the middle of the action no matter what scene. Foley detail, ADR, and on location audio is perfectly blended, and extremely well integrated together with the Shigeru Umebayashi’s score and sound effects. While each had its place in the sound field, nothing steps on each other no matter how dense the mix gets. This sound track is a perfect compliment to the excellent cinematography of this film.

Fearless Blu-ray, News and Updates

• Today on Blu-ray - December 9th - December 9, 2008


• Fearless Announced for Blu-ray Release - October 7, 2008

Fearless Blu-ray, Forum Discussions

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