Mini Review: The Three Kingdoms - Resurrection of the Dragon

[s2mikey]

Being a fan of of the Asian epic genre I decided to try out some of these films and placed an Amazon UK order. The first one I watched was The Three Kingdoms - Resurrection of the Dragon.

MOVIE - Decent but not great. It really could have used some more character development and "down time" to help flesh things out a little more. There are some good performances and the plot is coherent enough but the large time gaps and feeling that you are missing details does hold it back. Not sure about the narration either although it doesnt really hurt anything. Overall, its in the middle of the pack as far as these types of films go. Ive seen better and worse. For fans of the genre, like me, its an OK addition to your library. Definitley not as bad as some of the worst reviews say and not as good as the 5 star reviews say.

PQ - I would give the PQ about a 4 stars out of 5 rating. Good detail without any nasty processing issues or other issues. The color pallette appears ever so slightly subdued although it has moments of good color saturation and does have plenty of "punch". Blacks are mostly very good with only some slight noise during nightime or dark room scenes but this is common. In other words - the blu-ray release of this film looks very good and even though I havent seen the DVD version Im quite sure the blu-ray will blow it away. Its not a reference titles but its blu-ray all day.

AQ - Great soundtrack(mandarin DTS MA 5.1) and a 5 out of 5 IMO. Thunderous stampedes, big battle drums, swordplay, etc, etc. Dialog was clear and crisp although I was reading the subtitles. Even so, I could tell that Chinese speaking people will have no issues with the dialog in this film. The music was mostly good too. All in all, its a thumper.

OVERALL - Id give this title & release a solid 3.5 stars out of 5. The film itself is solid if unspectacular, the video quality isnt world-beater but its well within the blu-ray threshhold, and the audio is kickin'.