Tiger Cage III Blu-ray Review

Stock Trading Cage

With a script showing concern for Hong Kong’s rapid economic expansion in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, Tiger Cage III jettisons the action-driven nature of its predecessors. It’s not a movie without action – there’s a dazzling fire-soaked brawl near the finale – rather one choosing to focus elsewhere.

It’s a complicated mess concerning insider trading, manipulating markets, and inherent sexism that bubbles to the surface as the opportunity for greed expands. There’s even a vintage kung fu trope as James (Kwok Leung Cheung) disappears for six months following a graphic burn injury, training himself to retaliate against those who hurt him.

Tiger Cage III comes off an unambitious sequel

Further tragedy is seen in Suki’s (Man Cheung) story who manipulates wealthy men on her way to establishing power, eventually sucked in to the scummiest elements of stock market and business deals. Once the heroine, she’s eventually blinded by her success, unable to see James’ attempts to help.

Tiger Cage III loves exposing board rooms for their sleaziness and self-indulgence; that’s what it does best, relegating the fights and action to secondary status. Lacking in Donnie Yen’s notable star power, Tiger Cage III comes off an unambitious sequel, more reserved, and showing ever increasing blood in an effort to hide the so-so choreography (when up against the previous two Tiger Cage films).

At only 90-minutes, Tiger Cage III isn’t a complete loss, just a significant drop-off. It’s a statement movie first, pumping in action to offset the contemporary commentary embedded in the script. Concerns over corruption and criminality in stock markets hasn’t diminished in recent years (if anything, wealth inequality turned into an ever greater issue in modern times) allowing Tiger Cage III to sustain its relevancy, if not the energy or excitement.

Video

A beautiful, freshly done master brings Tiger Cage III to renewed life in HD. Superior grain replication (better than the prior Tiger Cage II for certain) gives texture and sharpness proper due. Definition in close-ups is superb. Wide shots containing Hong Kong skyscrapers lose nothing in the transfer to HD.

Splendid color depth enriches flesh tones, pushing toward warmth, but not inaccurate. Primaries bloom, never oversaturated.

Attractive brightness pushes the contrast, intense and organic. Properly calibrated black levels deepen to pure black, elevating the depth. Tiger Cage III shows stellar dimensionality throughout.

Audio

Waning Cantonese mono struggles to resolve the score, and harsh dialog replication muddies the rest. Edgy sound effects fare no better, and considering the 1991 release, this sounds ancient compared to others from the era. The English dub (both tracks in DTS-HD) doesn’t perform better than the Cantonese track.

Extras

David West finishes off his trilogy commentary here. Critic James Mudge speaks on the Hong Kong action genre for 20-minutes. Then, critic Ricky Baker speaks for eight-minutes on the “heroic bloodshed” term/genre.

Full disclosure: This Blu-ray was provided to us for review. This has not affected the editorial process. For information on how we handle review material, please visit our about us page to learn more.

The following six screen shots serve as samples for our subscription-exclusive set of 29 full resolution, uncompressed HD screen shots grabbed directly from the Blu-ray: