The Heroic Ones (1970)

Since the manufacturer's (Well Go USA) defective initial release of "The Delightful Forest," many people have been wondering how the release of "The Heroic Ones" fares. Just watched it last night, and I can confirm that the disc itself plays fine.

The video looks much sharper than the recent slate of SB Dragon Dynasty Blu-rays, more in lines with the wonderful quality of the release of "Opium and The Kung-Fu Master". My sound system is decent--even so I'm not much of an audiophile so I'll just say it sounds great too.

I won't go into the film itself here, I'm sure you can find reviews of the film itself lots of other places.

The biggest issue with the Blu-Ray is the subtitling. It is as if there was no proofing done at all, and at times displays the worst (or best) examples of "engrish". The story is easy enough to follow for the most part, but many scenes lose emotional resonance, subtlety, etc. when subtitles are THIS bad. There really is no excuse for it. Its probably not an issue for you if you are a native speaker, but with a domestic USA release the subtitles need to be reviewed for English audiences before pressing.

Fans of SB and Old-School Martial Arts Epics who can deal with "engrish" are encouraged to check this out. All others probably want to wait for Well Go USA to step it up just a notch before dropping skrilla on this release.

The video quality is very good. But I suspect it is an upscale and not a true hi-def.

As when I use the zoom on my flat screen, the faces in the background is not that clear. And the zoom on my blu-ray player was disable on this blu-ray disc, when on a regular DVD the zoom was available.

Also I don't like the title "The Heroic Ones". When I saw this, I was around 4 or 5 years old, the title was "The 13 Princes". I spend years looking for it under the title "The 13 Princes" with no avail. Only after much research did I find out that they gave it a fake name of "The Heroic Ones".

In addition, if you take a look at the movie poster of this movie, if you are able to find it, it said "Heroic Ones" in English & "13 princes" in Chinese Character. Even if you don't read Chinese, you can do basic research and find out what the Chinese characters are for 13 and you will see that the number 13 is on the movie poster, or rather the character for 10 & 3 on the movie poster.

I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because of the 80% possibility of it being an upscale & the fake name of this movie.

Update: 05/29/2011

If you go to blu-ray dot com, you will see an editor review on this movie "Heroic Ones".

Dustin Sommer title of the review "Excuse me...Did you say there are heroes in this film?" criticized the 13 princes as not being very heroic in their behavior. He then ranted on about how bad their behavior were and such.

Well if he had did his research and known that the real title is "The 13 princes", base on an actual novel by that name, he would have known that the movie is about the 13 princes during the Tang Dynasty. And not rant on, revealing how ignorant he is about the history of this movie and history period.

And maybe if he know the true history, he would not be so disappointed about this movie, as it portrait them accurately, as the barbarian that they were known for. Not that it is good or bad, but as it should be in history.

Update: 05/30/2011

It seems this movie is in 1080i, as I have heard about in other Shaw Brothers Blu-Ray release. Thus when I set my blu-ray player video output to 1080i, the picture quality is excellent. But when I set the Blu-ray player video output to 1080P, the picture looks as if it is upscale. I don't know why but that is just the way it is.

However, I will still leave the rating at 4 stars, as they should have mentioned that this is 1080i on the Blu-ray package so that I know to set the Video ouput to 1080i.

Update 7/26/2011

Disregard my comment about the quality of the picture. I was wrong as the quality is excellent & perfect at 1080P. It seems I had my output set at 24 frames per second. I guess they had this selection so you can feel like you are at the movie theatre that is usually set at 24 frames per second. But this setting gives the weird effects I mentioned above. After delecting the 24 fps option, the picture quality is perfect. I am giving this DVD 5 stars.

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