The Film:
Directed by Jingle Ma (Tokyo Raiders, Tokyo Raiders 2), Silverhawk is a fun yet very unoriginal film. It stars Richie Ren (Elixir Of Love, Tokyo Raiders 2) as Rich Man, a police superintendent who is bought to the town of Polaris to arrest Silver Hawk (Michelle Yeoh - Tomorrow Never Dies, Memoirs Of A Geisha), a vigilante who is tackling so much crime that it makes the police look stupid and is causing low morale. Little does Rich Man know however, is that Silver Hawk is actually his old friend from martial arts training school, Lulu. They first meet again as Rich Man approaches her on the plane to Polaris and, not realising who she is, attempts to get a date with her. When he gets to the police station, Rich Man is bragging about his conquest to the rest of the staff only to be laughed at when he rings what he believes to be her phone number, only to find it is for the police station. One of the first assignments Rich Man has in Polaris is to attend a technology extravaganza, where Professor Ho Chung (Daming Chen - Beverly Hills Ninja, Full Impact) is to unveil his latest artificial intelligence invention, a chip that tells you what you need to eat and when as well as when you must exercise. This is booed at the conference however as people express the fact they want the right to freedom of choice. Rich Man again meets Lulu here and they start talking away, but whilst they are doing so, Professor Ho Chung is kidnapped. We soon find out that his kidnapper, Alexander Wolfe (Luke Goss - ZigZag, Blade II), is planning to input the chip into a new mobile phone and control people into doing what he wants them to do. As I said earlier, an unoriginal film following the usual bad guy takes invention to take over the world and must be stopped routine. It is, however, quite enjoyable and this is down to some fantastic action scenes and fight choreography. The acting is pretty average and there are no outstanding performances (though Luke Goss is better at acting now than when he was miming in pop group Bros). As long as you leave your brain at the door, this film is worth a watch.
The DVD:
Video:
We have been given an anamorphic transfer in the OAR of 2.35:1 with this release and it's a very good one at that. There are no blemishes and no traces of grain. It's very clear, especially during the scene in which there is a lot of explosions. We are also given a choice of Chinese simplified, Chinese traditional or English subtitles. I watched the film with the English subtitle stream and it was pretty good. The only thing I didn't like, was that when someone paused mid-sentance, the subtitles would be a series of 3 stars like this: ***.
Audio:
We are given a choice of three different soundtracks. Cantonese DTS 5.1, Cantonese Dolby Digital 5.1 and Mandarin Dolby Digital 5.1. I watched the film using the DTS soundtrack and it was very good. The explosions and tones of the film were done with great pizazz and and sound levels were consistent. Not a track to show off your equipment, but very good nonetheless.
Extras:
The Story - We start off with some text notes giving us a small amount of detail about the story and Silver Hawk's background. 2 pages of English notes, and one page of Chinese.
Making Of featurette - Unfortunately, this fifteen minute featurette has no English option, so I can only describe what I could make out. It seems to show a lot of stunt work with Michelle Yeoh (who does her own stunts) as well as the usual fluff type material.
Conceptual Drawings - A short slideshow showing some of the conceptual drawings of what the makers wanted certain parts to be/look like. Runs for two minutes and two seconds.
Photo Gallery - A longer slideshow than the conceptual drawings one, but it's basically made up of mainly screenshots. Runs for seven minutes.
The Rest - We re also given Credits listing which is English friendly and biographies for director Jingle Ma and stars Michelle Yeoh and Richie Jen which aren't English friendly. We round off the extras with bonus trailers for Eye 2, Magic Kitchen and Elixir Of Love as well as a theatrical trailer.
