Available on Blu-ray and 4K UHD June 11th, 2024, from Eureka Entertainment
When pirates invade the land, the emperor dispatches an officer and his cohorts to take care of the problem.
Written and directed by King Hu, this historical action drama is one that is fascinating and exciting. The film’s story is one that is based on history (with some facts adapted of course) and turns itself into a fight happy film that keeps the pace fairly high throughout, having action sequences regularly and making its stakes very clear. Some of this may be a bit dated of course, but it is part of the charm. Fans of 1970s wuxia and martial arts films should pay attention here as it has a classic story, some fun action, and great stunts. While the story is more of a drama, there are a few bits of humor here and there, thus rounding things out nicely. The writing and direction are solid here, showing the King Hu was indeed a master and that his work is more than worthy of this series.
The cast here is fun to watch, including familiar faces such as Roy Chiao and the always fun Sammo Kam-Bo Hung. This cast here definitely works as unit, showing that they are in this together, whether on the good side or the bad side of the story. This is what an ensemble cast should look like, everyone doing their thing while enhancing what the others are doing. The acting is solid here and the fighting from some of the actors (with stunt people of course) is fantastic. There are a few different styles here and they all work well together within the framework of the story at large. The fight choreography is superb here, giving the cast and stunt people a lot to do while looking fantastic.
The film cinematography by Ching-Chu Chen is generally beautiful and well framed with a few scenes where the horizon line is off, but it’s off enough to be on purpose (same with the light flares/leaks here and there). The film looks stunning here and the cinematography shines in the new 4K restoration done from original negatives which is explained before the movie starts on this release, going into details on how painstakingly they looked at each image to fix any issue or any discolorations. This attention to detail is something that elevates this re-release above most others, making The Valient Ones one of the most stunning restorations to come across this viewer’s disc player in long time. The images are fantastically well-shot and amazingly well-restored. The sound is also solid with crisp sound design and soundtrack along with the original Mandarin audio.
The Valiant Ones is a solid film in its own right, one that shows that writer, director, producer, editor King Hu had something special, a knack for great filmmaking. His work is showcased here in amazing color and detail in this more than solid restoration.
This release also comes with a bunch of extras, the top of these being the new interview with Billy Chan, the 2003 archival interview with Hsu Feng, the 2003 archival interview with Roger Garcia of the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society, and the 2016 archival interview with Ng Ming-choi who has a second interview about their father on this release. Of course, this is a packed release, so other extras and new art pieces are included here.