8 / 10
score
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Introduction
It’s nice to have a speciality. Hong Kong cinema’s speciality once upon a time, used to be the kung fu movie. An unlikely student would join a school of kung fu, and somehow find the wherewithal to excel at his chosen discipline. Then a rival school would appear, villainous and materialistic, as opposed to the pious and virtuous school of our hero. The villains would in some way slight our hero, whether by besmirching a reputation, or attacking his master, and the hero would go on a quest for righteous vengeance. The only real difference between the movies would be the style of kung fu used. Today, Hong Kong cinema’s speciality is the hard-bitten, gritty, urban cop thriller. Fortunately, there is an infinitely greater variety in the stories that can be told in the confines of this genre. To kick off 2010, Cine Asia bring the latest in hard-bitten, gritty cop thrillers, The Beast Stalker, and they do so in 2-disc Collector’s Edition form. Let us partake…

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Cheung Yat-tung is a notorious underworld figure, who only now has been brought to face justice in front of the courts. Except justice is unlikely when the head prosecutor Ann Gao’s daughter has been kidnapped, and that the only way she’ll see her alive again is if she ‘disappears’ some crucial evidence. Of course, the last thing she must do is involve the police. Except that a cop named Sergeant Tong witnessed the kidnapping, and despite Ann’s wishes, he’s hot on the trail of the kidnapper. Now here’s the thing. Tong was the man who caught Cheung in the first place, but it was an arrest that went horribly wrong when Ann Gao happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the mayhem and trying to stop Cheung, Tong shot and killed Ann’s eldest daughter by accident. Since then, Tong has been trying to expiate his guilt, and spending time with Ann’s surviving daughter. And now that she has been taken, he’s compelled to save her. Tong’s guilt may be blinding his judgement, and time’s running out.

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Picture
Cine Asia give us their typical NTSC-PAL standards conversion, overly sharp and a tad too bright, to compensate for the innate softness and ghosting of the transfer. It doesn’t quite work as always. I’m used to standards conversions for anime, but that is a television source. Film is another matter, and it really should go directly to PAL. I always get the feeling that Cine Asia skimp on this, as they invariably release a Blu-ray version of the film as well. However in this case, I can find no mention of a Blu-ray release of The Beast Stalker, which makes this twice a disappointment.

Nevertheless, the image will get you by; it’s clear and vibrant for the most part, if overly sharp as already mentioned. The action is clear when needs to be, and there’s plenty of shaky cam verité to make the action scenes seem even more dynamic. There’s plenty of action to be had here as well, with an awesome car chase sequence, a thrilling chase on foot, and gunplay and fistfights to boot. This is heart-pounding, edge of the seat stuff, and once again, it’s a shame that the transfer doesn’t live up to it.

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Sound
You have a choice between DD 2.0 and 5.1 Cantonese, and there is also a DD 5.1 English dub to ignore. It’s a fairly workmanlike surround track, certainly lively during the action sequences, but The Beast Stalker isn’t heavy on the incidental music, and I did find that dialogue levels were variable for the first twenty-odd minutes of the film, before settling down into something quite acceptable. Of course, English subtitles are provided, if like me your Cantonese isn’t too hot.


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