The Film:
New years eve, 1999, was supposed to be a major day for the world because we were about to go into the 21st century, amidst widespread, media driven panic about a computer bug, which would destroy all computer systems due to the year date. Then the clock struck midnight, all the computers were still working, and the Daily Mail went and found something else to panic about. With this fear however, came a slew of films using computer viruses as its main plot point. This is one of those films.
2000 AD stars Aaron Kwok as Peter, the brother of a technological wizard who is murdered. What Peter didn't know is that many different groups, including the CIA, were after his brother because of a virus he had invented that could cause financial meltdown through computers worldwide. As the film continues, Peter and his best friend Benny (Danny Wu) get drawn into shootouts and chases as people believe he knows the information on the virus. As he figures this out, the game is on to try and get to the virus first, thus saving the world, despite many attempts at espionage.
When I first looked at buying this film, I did my usual research, and was taken aback when I found out the main actor is a major Eastern pop star. I reflected on other films I had seen that had pop stars in it such as Enough with Jennifer Lopez, The Dukes of Hazzard with Jessica Simpson, Crossroads with Britney Spears, Street Fighter 2 with Kylie Minogue and more recently Holly Valance in Dead or Alive, and was contemplating deleting this from the basket, but a voice inside me said to order it anyway. I'm glad I did. The plot of the film is wafer thin with the storyline being rewritten as it was shot, and the acting isn't anything outstanding, yet there is something great about this film. Despite taking a good half hour to get going, the action scenes soon start coming and they are presented with such finesse and explosiveness I couldn't keep my eyes off the screen. There's your usual car chase and random fights, but it's the gunplay that outshines the rest of the film here. Hell, John Woo would be impressed. The non-stop action stops this film from becoming a slow moving, bore of a film, and I would heartily recommend it to fans of any action thriller. Not a great film, but a pretty good one.
The DVD:
Video:
Hong Kong Legends ave given this film a very nice anamorphic transfer presented at 1.78:1. Colours are good with skin tones appearing accurate, and there is only very little grain during one or two scenes. Saying this however, it does lack a certain something, like the film is supposed to come across kind of gritty, but the picture doesn't allow it to. There's nothing wrong with the transfer, but there is still room for improvement.
Audio:
We have been given the option of two different soundtracks for this release, a dubbed English Dolby Digital 5.1 track, or the original Cantonese Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Obviously, I opted for the original language track and it was quite impressive making good use of the surrounds, even when there isn't much action going on at the time. Bullets whizz past your head, making the already excellent gunplay, appear even better.
Extras:
HKL have given us a number of extras on this release.
We start with an audio commentary involving director Gordon Chan and Hong Kong cinema expert Bey Logan. The two get on really well, rather than Logan going on for the full duration of the film with an immense amount of knowledge that he normally throws at you, this is more of an informative chat where he acts as the moderator. To be honest, if they were only going to have one audio commentary, I'd have preferred a solo one from Logan as he's extremely informative and certainly knows his stuff, or even better a solo one to compliment this one. The only shame is that these two talented people ended up working together on The Medallion, which was a bit of a disappointment.
A Making Of 2000 AD is the next extra included, and it features many interview segments with the majority of the major cast and crew, who tell us about a variety of things, from filming the car chase scene, doing their own stunts, the gunplay action scenes, getting support from the Singapore Air Force during filming and SFX company Stargate. The only problem with the featurette is it is interrupted by Kwok's music video. It runs for 19 minutes, 51 seconds.
Next up we have an interviews section. The first is with director Gordon Chan who educates us on the concept and idea of the movie, workin with Aaron, using special effects (the grenade in the film was actually an apple), the differences between filming in Hong Kong and Singapore and how he uses the extreme violence to stop people thinking it's OK to do it in real life. It runs for 14 minutes, 39 seconds. The second interview is with Andrew Lin who tells us how his career started in special effects in America with films like Mimic. He then talks about his first major role in The Black Sheep Affair, shooting 2000 AD, how his character was initially a hero in the film and how they did as many of their own stunts as possible.
We also get an image gallery and some trailers:
Bonus Trailers:
- "The Big Boss" (1:28)
- "Fist of Fury" (1:50)
- "Way of the Dragon" (1:25)
- "Eastern Condors" (1:41)
- "Armour of God" (1:31)
- "In the Line of Duty" (1:53)
- "Iron Monkey" (1:36)
- "Purple Storm" (1:42)
- "Magnificent Warriors" (1:39)
- "City Hunter" (1:32)
Trailers:
- UK Promotional (1:38)
- Original Theatrical Trailer (2:02)
- Hong Kong Teaser Trailer (0:47)
- Hong Kong Music Promo (1:06)
