Monday, December 9, 2013

Enter the Dragon (40th Anniversary Edition) [Blu-ray]



Exit the Dragon
So here it is... more than 30 years since the original theatrical release of Enter the Dragon, Warner Brothers releases the definitive 2 DVD Special Edition. It's a fine offering, long overdue, and considering the reasonable price, really offers a lot of nice extras, though most of them have been available elsewhere and have therefore been seen before (at least by rabid fans like me).

To start with, there is of course the movie Enter the Dragon (ETD) - Bruce Lee's magnum opus that was not released until after his unfortunate death in 1973, but sealed his immortality. The plot is simple enough - Bruce is a modern day Shaolin monk who is somehow enlisted by the British/Hong Kong government to infiltrate the island of Dr. Han (Shieh Kien), a crusty old renegade Shaolin gone bad who holds a yearly martial arts tournament to recruit talent for an international opium and prostitution racket. Roper (John Saxon), or "Loper" as Bruce says his name, is the established Hollywood caucasian...

Amazing how good it looks
I recently watched Enter The Dragon on the Voom HD Kung-Fu network, and it looked relatively good, but not great.

The Blu-Ray version obviously got a lot more attention, care, and cleanup. It is by far the best looking and sounding version I've ever seen of the movie. It sounds like the bass was tweaked quite a bit, because whenever Bruce would hit one of his signature punches, my subwoofer put out one heck of a thump. It sounded great, if not a little over the top.

Some of the signature grain of the original is still there, but the images are much more crisp and sharp than any other version.

Definitely worth it for the Bruce Lee fans out there.

Greatest martial arts movie of all time in HD!
I recently purchased a Playstation 3 and an HD LCD TV, and this is the first Blu-Ray disc that i have bought. Ive seen this movie dozens of times on TV, VHS and DVD and i thought i knew every fight scene back to front. Since seeing it today, i discovered how much i was missing in those old video formats. There really is that much more detail and smoothness in the images. Its a great showing for a 30yo movie. There is also a great deal of documentaries and extras if you dig that kind of stuff.

As for the movie itself...its a classic action movie with fantastic fight scenes, a convincing bad guy, funny bits, armies of dumb henchmen, hot chicks and Bruce Lee in his prime! What more could an action film lover want?

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