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Simitar/Simitar .
R4 . COLOR . 99 mins .
R . NTSC |
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Normally I wouldn't purchase a B-grade Simitar distributed dvd but on the request of Tyson Dowd of DVD Rent to "just take a look, I'm sure you'll like it" I did just that.
Not knowing what to expect other than a good action flick, I loaded up the 505 and sat back. Did I ever enjoy myself! It reminded me of the times some 10 - 15 years ago when I would rent an action flick with my friends on a saturday afternoon and just enjoy the outrageousness of it all.
And what is it about this movie that did it. One simple thing, Mark Dacascos. He is truly in the same league as Jackie Chan and Jet Li. His martial arts skills are very precise and the combination of his art and that of the choreographer make this movie a visual feast of violent art.
Toby Wong (Mark Dacascos) is a martial arts expert with a twist. He has a bio-energy module implanted into his chest that enhances his skills to almost super human strengths. but Toby doesn't want this strength and the only way to stop him is to send an army after him to kill him.
But he has other plans and he kidnaps Malik (Kadeem Hardison, Dwayne Wayne of It's a Different World fame) to drive him across the country to escape this posse. The 2 become embroiled in this chase and have to help each other when they finally face off with a newly advanced bio-energy enhanced killer.
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It's your usual Simitar standard, not that great but consistently good. The transfer is of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio variety with no 16x9 enhancing.
There is a lot of movement on screen in this disc and the compression method didn't hold up that well hence motion artifacts are present right from the start. On some TV's you will notice the pixelation immeadiately, others with properly calibrated TV's won't be detracted as easily.
This is probably the one disc that I have come across so far that I didn't really care about the video transfer in comparison to the fun on the screen. The transfer does the job but it ain't no award winner.
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Now, here's an interesting note. The disc is labelled as containing a dolby digital 5.1 soundtrack, the 505 displays the audio as 5.1, yet there seems to be a lack of center channel. Tyson warned me of this and it does seem like it is so. I hadn't really calibrated the audio so at first it seemed the center channel was low but and in fact was.
I didn't really pay much attention to this as I could hear the dialogue fine so I let it be. The surrounds and the ambience on the other hand were very evident and seemed very good for a b-movie.
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The Internet Movie database rates this movie as an 8.3/10 and rightly so, it is a very entertaing b-movie. I personally, HIGHLY RECOMMEND this for fans of outrageous martial arts and for those not delving into anything coming out of Simitar, let this be your first adventure.
LINK: http://www.dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=56
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