Warriors Two Blu-ray Review

Sammo Hung’s Comic Ingenuity

On paper, Warriors Two is among the most standard of kung-fu movies. A hero’s mother is killed, he trains with a master, and earns his revenge. Slight political happenings (the killers seek office) bend the formula slightly, but that’s nominal.

Warrior Two’s spark comes purely from the directorial lens of Sammo Hung; he’s also a co-star to Ho Wang, the latter playing the wronged man seeking vengeance. The key to this movie is enthusiasm and energy, all of this on Hung.

Wonderfully expressive and goofy as Warriors Two often is, it’s also brutal

The fights show brilliance in their choreography, part raw violence, part cartoon absurdity. It’s a mix that works better than expected because Warriors Two so effortlessly exists in dual logic. Hung plays the material for laughs and screwball comedy, letting the others around him remain grounded for dramatic bite.

Wonderfully expressive and goofy as Warriors Two often is, it’s also brutal. There isn’t an on-screen death that’s anything less than grueling showmanship. Master Tsang (Ka-Yan Leung) brawls until the last breath, a glorious fight sequence mixing dangerous stunt work, bloodshed galore, Golden Harvest choreography, and minimal wire work to make the sequence a stand-out.

It’s fair to say Hung hews close to Shaw Brothers form with this film, not only with the generic vengeance angle, but in fighting/choreography style too. Golden Harvest was fresh as Shaw sank into ever more formulaic genre filmmaking; Warriors Two is, generally speaking, nigh indistinguishable from Shaw’s contemporary output.

But, Hung still provides his signature flair, wacky and charming even before his ‘80s and ‘90s prime. His character and performance delight even against the dramatic flourishes that provide Warriors Two narrative weight. While not always necessary, his routines break from the static run of training montages, and build to the inevitable if spectacular 20-minute climax stuffed with glowing creativity. Bending logic (and bodies), the multi-staged duel feels like an appropriately scaled release from the tension that led into this showdown. That’s worth seeing on its own.

Video

Arrow delivers on this one, presenting a gorgeous print, mastered recently, and at a high resolution. Stable grain helps the encode present this cleanly, without signs of digital weariness. Mastering and encoding in tandem keep Warriors Two transparent to the film stock.

The result is a detailed, precise video offering. Facial definition stands out in close and the various forest sets/locations display splendid sharpness.

Equally grand, color density doesn’t miss, producing saturation in droves, energizing flesh tones and primaries. Black levels lack the same consistency, but that’s more on the source material than this disc. Besides, brightness accounts for a lot, picking up what’s lost from the waning shadows.

Audio

Cantonese, Mandarin, and English mono tracks are joined by a 5.1 English dub remix – but eww to that one. Defaulting to Cantonese, the track definitely shows its limitations. The puffy sound effects and worn dialog won’t help Warriors Two at all. Strained, wobbly music reproduction struggles too. That all said, it’s rather standard for this genre/time period, and no worse or better than Warrior Two’s contemporaries.

Extras

Frank Djeng and Robert “Bobby” Samuels provide a solid commentary. A 2005 making-of runs 45-minutes. Kar-yan Leung is interviewed next, with trailers and images following. Note Arrow includes the Hong Kong theatrical cut and the international edit too.

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 34 full resolution, uncompressed HD screen shots grabbed directly from the Blu-ray: