Gritty Police Drama
SPL, or Kill Zone, is a modern day crime tale involving five police officers and a kingpin played by Sammo Hung. The police officers, including Donnie Yen as Inspector Ma and Simon Yam as Det. Chan Kwok Chung, are all hell-bent on putting Wong Po (Sammo Hung) behind bars. What exactly Po has done isn’t made clear and ultimately there isn’t a tremendous amount of character development in this one and a half hour action-drama, but we know that he’s a kingpin and causes the law a lot of trouble.
Things heat up when an undercover operative sent in by Chung to learn more about Po and his operations is murdered by Po. Moreover, it’s caught on tape by an amateur filmmaker. The tape offers compelling, but not fully conclusive evidence that Po was behind the murder. The team rallies around this evidence and are determined to make it the final piece of the puzzle that they need to put Po away for good. For this plan to work, however, Chung and his closest friends, which does not include precinct newcomer Ma, will have to break the law themselves. Inspector Ma doesn’t like the plan but gets dragged into the violence which ultimately pays harsh dividends to everyone involved.
The acting in Kill Zone is quite good. Yen, Hung, and Wu make up the vast majority of action scenes which are mostly empty hand combat although a great fight scene towards the end pits Yen and Wu against one another with weapons. This film won the 2006 Hong Kong Film Award for Best Action Film Choreography and it’s pretty evident why. The three main action stars put in superb performances and I loved the camera work too. Donnie actually talks about this in his interview segment in the extra feature. He states that they made a conscious decision to keep the camera work simple, and not use a variety of cuts and close shots and the like. Most of the action scenes are shot from a perspective that lets the viewer capture all of the action in a single, enjoyable frame.
I loved the blend of high speed upper body martial arts, high flying kicks, and even some grappling and wrestling maneuvers (Yen suplexes a guy, ha!). I also thought that Director Wilson Yip did a nice job of blending the dialogue and drama with the action scenes. Only about a quarter of the movie is fight scenes while the rest advances the plot and ups the drama while building up to the final showdown.
On Blu-ray
Kill Zone on Blu-ray looks pretty good, but not great. There is a consistent grain in the image although it’s much harder to see in some scenes than others. Often times I was able to pick it out in the corners of my display better than in the main picture where most of the movement was occurring. While it’s a shame to see, it’s not a deal breaker. As always with foreign film I used subtitles with the original language track, in this case Cantonese in 5.1 DTS-HD, and found it to be quite good. There are also Spanish subtitles and there is an English 5.1 Dolby Digital Track.
As for extra features, I enjoyed the interviews. There are also some promotional clips in SD including the Hong Kong Theatrical Trailer, US Promotional Trailer, as well as a fifteen, twenty, thirty, and alternate thirty second TV spots. An audio commentary track with Hong Kong Cinema Expert Bey Logan is included, too. The interviews, all in SD, total over one and a half hours; they are:
-Born To Be Bad: Sammo Hung (~16 minutes)
-Echoes Of Darkness: Simon Yam (~14 minutes)
-First Among Equals: Donnie Yen (~40 minutes)
-A Dragon Rising: Jacky Wu (~22 minutes)
-A Man Apart: Wilson Yip
These interviews, especially those from Sammo and Donnie, are really interesting for a fan like me. We hear Sammo talk about how he thought the characters could have used more development and how fun it is to work with an expert like Donnie. He also mentions that the Hong Kong action star disappearing these days as he, Jackie Chan, and Donnie Yen are fading away and no one is up and coming in Hong Kong to replace them. Meanwhile Donnie talks (in English) about the movie and some of his philosophies on filmmaking and a variety of other topics.
With that, lets get to the summary…