Invisible Target Blu-ray delivers stunning video and audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
An armoured truck is secretly transporting $100 million for a U.S. bank when it is hijacked by
a band of robbers calling themselves the 'Ronin Gang'. The gang blows up the truck and makes
off with all the cash. Three young detectives, led by Chan Chun (Nicholas Tse), are soon
assigned to thwart another massive bank robbery organised by the Ronin Gang.
For more about Invisible Target and the Invisible Target Blu-ray release, see the Invisible Target Blu-ray Review published by Jeffrey Kauffman on August 17, 2010 where this Blu-ray release scored 4.0 out of 5.
It's a good thing that director Benny Chan and his co-scenarists Rams Ling and Melody Lui decided not to call their film Inaudible Target, or they may have been liable for false advertising. This loud, bombastic and literally explosive film starts out with a hyperbolic bang and rarely lets up for the next two or so hours, providing one conflagration after another, detonations which punctuate an otherwise fairly trite and true (pun intended) storyline. When a group of thugs engineers the heist of a fortune from an armored car, killing several innocent bystanders (as well as almost all of the responding policemen) in the process, they set a revenge scenario in motion by dint of the fact that one those killed was the fiancée of a police officer named Chan Chun (Nicholas Tse). When the same gang shows up a few months later and manages to kill yet more people, this time yet another group of policemen led by Carson Fong Yik-wei (Shawn Yue). The third leg of what becomes the figurative stool upon which the vengeance setup is built is a rookie cop named Wai King-ho (Jaycee Chan, son of Jackie), who, while a true blue straight arrow sort, has been suspended from duty due to his brother cop's disappearance, which the higher-ups in the police force believe is due to the brother having joined the criminal gang. When Chan and Carson question Wai about the fate of his brother, an unlikely alliance is forged as the three, all seeking answers and for wont of a better word "closure" to their various emotional wounds, set out to bring the gang to justice.
Ka-BOOM!
Invisible Target blasts through its clichés with a certain elegance and showiness, depicting a despicably violent criminal class (led by Jacky Wu) which could have come from the darkest reaches of the imaginations of either Quentin Tarantino or perhaps Sam Peckinpah. These are bad guys of the most morally deficient kind, aided and abetted by superior martial arts fighting skills. Director and co-scenarist Chan doesn't flinch from these cinematic forebears; indeed he almost exults in them, as he does in some sly references to such films as Speed, with a somewhat over-articulated subplot involving a doomed schoolbus filled with frightened children.
This is a film which rarely if ever pauses to take a breath, and that breakneck pace (accentuated by lots of quick cut editing) helps to keep the viewer engaged even when the story itself plays out largely in predictable ways. Director Chan does his best work in several set pieces, notably a brilliant chase and fight sequence atop and even between roofs which is reminiscent of the spectacular freerunning segment in the Daniel Craig Casino Royale.
While Jaycee Chan may be the allure for some viewers who want to see if the torch has been passed to a new generation of chop socky experts, his role is actually the least flashy of the heroes' triad, actually highlighting his acting chops more than his literal ones. Chan does quite well by the role, though the melodramatic finale may leave a few (or perhaps more than a few) more cynical viewers rolling their eyes in dismay. It's to Invisible Target's credit that these moments, as hackneyed as they are, never ultimately detract from the film's visceral pleasures, which assault the viewer with such ferocity that there's little time to actually think about the lack of nuance or logical character development.
Director Chan has made a respectable name for himself with a series of film which attempts to propel the lunatic fringes of the martial arts idiom forward into an almost proto-punk ambience, certainly a melding which makes sense, considering the mayhem and destruction which typically rain down in movies of this ilk. While Chan tends to use shorthand a lot of the time to quickly give us types rather than actual characters, he tends to ameliorate those tendencies which such splendidly shot action sequences that it's hard to be too curmudgeonly when assessing the actual impact (figurative and literal) of his films. Invisible Target, like a lot of Chan's oeuvre, may not be particularly deep (despite its occasional—largely laughable—efforts to philosophize), but it's a slam-bang adventure that grabs the viewer by the eyes and ears from the first explosive moment and rarely if ever lets go for the next two hours.
How is it we could put a man on the moon and yet so many high-def releases are plagued by what seems like should be are easily solvable problems like aliasing, moire patterns and shimmer? I am happy to report that Invisible Target's really sharp looking AVC encoded 1080p image (in 2.35:1) may not exactly be "one small step for man, one giant leap for (Blu-ray watching) Mankind," but it manages to resolve some typically thorny issues like close-knit herringbone patterns on menswear with pristine clarity. Overall the film dabbles in tints of green and blue, with a sort of fluorescent cast to a lot of the proceedings, all of which is presented here with accuracy and abundant detail. It's my hunch that the film's occasional blown out contrast is by design, and so I won't mark the film's image quality down for that stylistic choice, though some videophiles may indeed be bothered by its resultant lack of fine detail. Otherwise this is a really sharp looking transfer, one of the best from the Dragon Dynasty imprint's pretty spotty track record.
While there are no lossless audio options on Invisible Target, only the most persnickety audiophiles are going to have much to complain about, especially in the superior standard Cantonese DTS 5.1 mix, which is stupendously robust, delivering a literally earth shaking amount of LFE throughout the film's many explosions and battles. This is a sonic onslaught which may not have a lot of subtlety to recommend itself, but which bristles and thumps and swoops around the listener with such alarming force that it can be breathtaking at times. Also on tap are a standard Cantonese Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, which is noticeably less robust especially on the low end of the spectrum, as well as an English dub delivered in Dolby Digital 5.1. After toggling through all three, it was an easy choice to settle on the DTS mix, which manages to eke out a fair amount of immersion in the fight sequences, while delivering a solid, if unspectacular, center-heavy mix in the dialogue sequences. Yes, lossless audio would have upped the ante that much more, but the DTS 5.1 mix provided here is enjoyable and extremely forceful in the action sequences.
One of the strongest arrays of supplements on any Dragon Dynasty release thus far help to give the fan a lot of background information on this film. The extras (all in SD) include:
A very good Commentary track featuring the film's stars as well as the always enjoyable Bey Logan;
Deleted and Extended Scenes (13:50) provides six alternate or cut segments with commentary (provided via subtitles);
Interview Gallery, the bulk of the supplemental features, which offers Like Father, Like Son (18:52) with Jaycee Chan, Licensed to Kill (19:31) with Shawn Yue, Invincible Target (27:52) with Wu Jing (Jacky Wu), and The Ronin (20:19) with Andy On;
Fight for the Glory (18:38) is an interesting featurette detailing how the fight sequences were put together;
Conception to the Silver Screen (17:59) is a nice look at how storyboards were used to craft the film; and
Orchestrated Mayhem (24:59), a good, if fairly typical, EPK making of featurette.
There's nothing particularly new or innovative in Invisible Target (in fact, quite the opposite), but director Chan stages everything with considerable panache, helping to make this film enjoyable despite its trite elements. This Blu-ray looks and sounds spectacular (despite no lossless audio), and fans of this genre will find a lot to like in Invisible Target. Recommended.
In an early announcement to retailers, it has been revealed that, on August 10, Vivendi Visual Entertainment will release four Asian films as part of its Dragon Dynasty collection: An Empress and the Warriors (Kwong saan mei yan, 2008); Invisible Target (Naam yi ...
