Project A Blu-ray features bad video and audio in this disappointing Blu-ray release
In late 19th Century Hong Kong the British may rule the land, but the pirates rule the waters. Reluctantly, the Coast Guard is given money to fight these pirates, but the pirates themselves have many contacts (that is, bribed officials) in the government, and seek to thwart the Coast Guard's efforts to eliminate them. One Coast Guard officer is Dragon Ma, who is determined that his beloved Coast Guard will not be made fools of.
There might be some physical humor and even a sprinkling of slapstick in Project A, but its Blu-ray release is no laughing matter. Never
mind that the bloopers have been
excised from the credits -- the joke's on the audience there -- but it's quite the unfunny situation here, in the aggregate. The movie arrives cut,
dubbed, absent its original opening title sequence, lacking those end-credit outtakes, and looking and sounding rather frazzled to boot. Does Echo
Bridge care about this release, or any Jackie Chan release? Is there a vendetta
against him and his movies? Sure, the Action
star extraordinaire's movies are making their way to Blu-ray -- Operation Condor, Operation Condor II, and Twin Dragons have all been released under the Echo Bridge banner --
but can any of them get a fair Blu-ray treatment? Bad dubs, cuts, poor transfers, subpar audio, scant extras: that's
sort of par for the course for Echo Bridge, but things looked to be improvingoflate. It's a real head-scratcher; Chan's superstardom, a following in both the
mainstream and in the cult arenas, his box office draw, the legend of his physical stunt work, and even just the allure of the charming nature of his
films should be enough to earn his flicks a little extra love, some much-needed TLC. But fans are, for now, stuck with some grossly substandard
releases, Project A being a sterling example. And would it take that much effort to dig up the original? Even if the only available
elements were in rough shape, surely they
couldn't be much worse than what the studio's released here, and at least that would temporarily satisfy Chan and Blu-ray fans
just
looking for a favorite movie as it should be.
Ready to rumble.
In turn-of-the-century China, piracy and corruption are big problems. Unfortunately, the Navy isn't in much of a condition to battle the pirates.
Corruption runs rampant within the department, money is low, and a rivalry with the superior and better-funded police force is making matters
worse. Dragon Ma (Chan) is an acrobatic, high-energy Navy man who finds himself in the middle of a bar brawl with the police. Naval ships are
destroyed in the confusion, another plan for the corrupted officials to steal rifles from the police force for pirate use is set into motion in the chaos,
and it's just another day of rivalry and incompetence for the Navy. When Dragon's unit is disbanded and forced into duty as police officers, he takes
it upon himself to begin an operation to end the piracy problem once and for all. He teams up with a low-level thief named Fats (Sammo Hung) and
with whomever else will help him, determined to win the day regardless of which -- if any -- uniform he wears.
Project A screams B-movie plot and A-list action. To be sure, the narrative rightly takes a back seat to the high-flying stunts performed by
Chan himself. The picture rightly accentuates -- as most of his do -- the precise and demanding physical elements while merely
incorporating a plot which gels the successive stunts into a cohesive, flowing singular entity. The story becomes a bit bogged down in
unnecessary complexity and clunkiness, but these Chan films prove the exception to the rule that story and structure must at least match, and
usually supersede, raw visual excellence. To be sure, however, it's a tough assignment to critique an incomplete picture, but seeing the majority of
it does yield the impression that the reason to watch lies in the fun factor, in watching in amazement as Chan does this and that and defies nearly
everything human beings know about physical limitations while performs the stunts without fear. So never mind the wayward plot; this is Jackie
Chan in his comfort zone, a picture well-versed in his ways, and a movie that's highly representative of his own little personal sub-genre.
Chan's direction may not be as impressive as his on-camera work, but he captures the basics in the frame, and it's difficult to ask much more than
to see with all the clarity a shot might muster his collection of antics, whether recalling the physical comedies of yore as he scampers up a
flagpole while in handcuffs or dangles from a clock tower, or as he races a bicycle through narrow alleys or swashbuckles with the best of them,
sword
in hand and quip flowing from mouth. The film is proficiently assembled, even as it is in this edited version; the costumes and set decorations
impress in
simplicity but also in a created sense of authenticity. The acting is sufficient to carry the movie from one rowdy, energized action scene to the next,
but all of these are secondary to the real reason to watch, the execution of the stunts and the diversity of the physical hijinks that play throughout.
The extraordinary thing about Chan movies, in the whole, is how varied all the stunts
really are, how few repeat and in the way the actor exploits his environment for all his body can muster. Whether he pays homage to classics or
blazes his own bruised but beneficial trail, Chan dazzles with accomplishments worthy of what today may be defined as the peak of physical
stuntwork-as-entertainment. He's a
magician, pulling not rabbits from hats but rather unearthly stunts from every part of his being.
As noted above, and as is the focus of this review, Project A's Blu-ray video quality is nothing short of terrible. To be sure, there are scenes of
general competence,
where the image cleans up, offers serviceable detailing and adequate colors with little in terms of wear and other issues, but the vast majority of the
transfer is defined by a total lack of effort that's a true disservice to both the film and its fans. The image suffers most evidently from tremendous wear
and tear; scratches, pops, debris, and random vertical lines appear over a vast majority of the print. There's some overwhelming softness, sometimes
through the entire frame and often around its edges. Colors are sloppy and dim, and there's little color stability or nuance. Flesh tones are
shaky, and black levels fluctuate from overpowering to appearing washed out, and are often noisy to boot. The good news is that grain retention is
evident, and the image never really appears smoothed over. Detailing suffices, whether dirty faces and clothes, building façades, and general
elements around the frame. The film simply holds up better with the boosted resolution of Blu-ray, but otherwise there's almost nothing to like here.
The movie deserves better.
Project A arrives on Blu-ray with a DTS-HD MA 2.0 lossless soundtrack that fares almost no better than its video counterpart. This is a dubbed
track, presented in English only, and the dub is rather poor at that. Dialogue is listless and sounds fairly detached. It's audible and intelligible, but
doesn't offer that same crispness and natural presence that's usually found on the finer lossless presentations. The various fight scenes, from a rowdy
barroom confrontation on through the rest of the movie, lack stature and clarity. The general din of chaos -- landing punches, shattering glass,
crashing bodies, screaming fighters -- is audible, but with no precision or sonic authority. It's a jumble of definable but hardly life-accurate sound effects.
Gunfire does manage adequate crispness and the track delivers a few hefty explosions that give a cursory effort, but these hardly match what may be
found on even mediocre tracks. Ambient noise is limited, but chapter eight does offer some spacious crowd elements. Music is dull and, as with the rest
of the presentation, just "there" and nothing more. In total, this is a disappointing, lackluster, no-effort soundtrack that, sadly, fits right in with the
quality of every other aspect of this release.
Project A represents Jackie Chan at his best, but then again so does pretty much every other Jackie Chan movie. The picture is competently put
together and works well even in its edited form, though certainly the plot plays a distant second in importance to the execution, variety, and novelty of
Chan's hallmark physical work. Yet all is overshadowed by the rather sloppy and incomplete Blu-ray release. The movie looks rather poor, but
that's amongst the least of the release's worries. Fans will rightly demand the original and a superior presentation. As it is, Echo Bridge has given no
real good reason to upgrade to Blu-ray. The aforementioned poor video is matched by a forgettable and dubbed English-language track. No
supplements beyond the trailer are included. Sad to say -- particularly considering that the movie, even in this form, is worth the price of admission for
Chan's physical work alone -- that buyers should skip this one entirely and hope for something more complete down the road.
