Available from Eureka Entertainment
Following the death of his father, a detective goes looking for answers and soon finds out that not everyone one his father was associated with wanted the best for him.
Written and directed by Chang-hwa Jeong, the story here is exactly how it sounds, a bit generic and the twists and turns are bit predictable making the film not the most interesting of the recent bunch of re-releases. The writing here is more of an issue than the direction, as the direction works well for what is presented, but the characters are not all that interesting and the developments are just as expected, meaning there is not surprise, something the film’s summary on any given site will give a bunch of away (if it weren’t already obvious). The dialog is a bit clunky in the subtitles and clunkier in the English language cut. Overall, the entertainment value here is not from the writing, but more on the performances, or at least some of them.
The cast here does what they can with the story and the lines they are given, not all of them coming off all that great here. Of course, the highlight of the cast here is the presence of Sammo Kam-Bo Hung who can help save just about any scene he is in, so he ends up stealing some scenes and running away with this viewer’s attention whenever he shows up in this film. The performances here include some action sequences, a few fights, and other other stunts and those are decent enough. Not enough to rush to see the film, but enough to keep the viewer involved once they’ve put the film on.
Overall, The Double Crossers suffers from its writing both in the story and in the actors’ performances. The fights are decent and thank Thor for Sammo Kam-Bo Hung.
The new re-release of The Double Crossers comes with a few extras and all of them are solid. The disc comes with both the original Hong Kong theatrical release and the original English language export cut, both in 2K restorations. These both look good here and makes the most of the source material available. The sound on these goes along with the image quality. It’s dated, but good. For those preferring or needing subtitles, the Hong Kong cut has solid English subtitles. In terms of the actual extras, the disc has 2 commentaries, one on each version of the film with Hong Kong theatrical version having a commentary by Frank Djeng, East Asian film expert and a part of the NY Asian Film Festival, while the export cut has a commentary by Mike Leeder and Arne Venema, both action film experts. There is also new artwork, an O Card slipcover on the limited edition, a new booklet with writing by James Oliver, and of course the film’s trailer. The two commentaries are the highlight here.