Why So Blu?

As The Light Goes Out (Blu-ray Review)

To save Hong Kong from an fiery disaster, a team of dedicated firefighters battle an out-of-control blaze that threatens to plunge the city into catastrophic darkness in AS THE LIGHT GOES OUT, blazing onto Blu-ray, DVD from Well Go USA Entertainment. Written and directed by Derek Kwok of Journey to the West, the action-packed suspense drama stars Nicholas Tse, Shawn Yue, Simon Yam (Ip Man, Election), Hu Jun, William Chan, Bai Bing, Andy On and a cameo by the legendary Jackie Chan.  The film was one of the first films released this year in both Hong Kong and China as it came out the first week of January, just on the heels of New Years’ Day.  To date the film has accumulated a box office tally totaling over fifteen million dollars worldwide.

Film 

 It’s Christmas Eve in Hong Kong, and while the residents prepare to celebrate, a dedicated band of brothers – the firefighters of Pillar Point Division – are dispatched to a warehouse fire. What they find there first plunges the city into darkness, then threatens a far worse fate for them all. When every move could mean sudden death, the bonds between the men are tested, and dangerous truths uncovered. Will they be able to trust each other enough to make it through the night, saving themselves and the city they’ve sworn to protect?

In the early moments of this film, there is a firefighting commercial that features Jackie Chan riding a motorcycle to the score of Police Story while asteroids laying destruction upon a big city.  Its a commercial for becoming a firefighter.  The main characters in the film all laugh at it, call it ridiculous and talk about how that’s nothing like “real” firefighting at all.  Haha and LOL, but this movie winds up becoming every bit as ridiculous as that commercial was, but its completely lacking a lot of fun the Jackie Chan fiction seemed to carry with it.

Once this film gets to its main attraction of a massive warehouse fire, it gets very CG heavy and extremely over the top with its mission.  This isn’t me complaining, mind you.  There are some impressive moments here.  It honestly felt like I was watching someone playing a firefighting video game more than I did watch a movie.  The structure to the set ups and final execution of many of the action sequences really felt very inspired by things involving a controller in your hand.  It must be noted though, that this movie early on acted as if it was better than this sort of thing and I don’t think it was meant to be a self awareness joke.  In all honesty, I’m glad it was this over the top, because it at least gave me something to enjoy instead of a dour underdeveloped character drama I think it wanted to be.

There is one cool artfully crafted moment late on in the film that works mainly because its filmed nicely.  It probably could have been a bit more effective had I really given more of a rip about some of these folks leading up to that.  There was a pretty surprising death, I’ll give it that.  I just had a hard to time lining up with these characters.  And I think part of the problem was that they were not doing a good job of juggling so many of them throughout the feature.  They seem to want each of them to have a lot of background, but they weren’t intertwining it effectively.

As The Light Goes Out is solid for its eye candy when it gets to the major fire at the end, something it sets out NOT wanting to do.  The rest is some dull, drab underdeveloped and typical character drama that just didn’t work out.  There was some action talent behind the camera for sure, and the movie isn’t a total loss, its just not the big, real and important movie it thinks its setting out to be.  I do think people should check it out for some of its over the top firefighting action bits though.  Oh and if someone mentioned “thick smoke” one more time in the movie I may have punched out my screen.

Video 

Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1

Clarity/Detail:  Its hard to truly judge this film, because with all the smoke filling up every frame its a pretty ugly picture.  It looks like its hard for the film to hand a lot of it, as there as a some minor blocking issues during some heavily smoke sequences.  Overall it has a really smooth look to it, that makes me wonder how much was fiddled with in the transfer.

Depth:  There are some terrific moments, showing the scale of the fires and setting up an environment that look like they would have been terrific in a 3-D film even.

Black Levels:  Blacks are rich and have a big palette of shading.  Crushing does occur throughout, but I think this disc did the best with what it could.

Color Reproduction:  There aren’t a whole lot of colors to go bragging about there.  The yellow of the uniforms does pop and its really rich in grays.

Flesh Tones:  Natural and consistent.  A little too smooth looking through most of the film.  Good detail in closeups.

Noise/Artifacts:  Hard to tell with all the “thick smoke” around.

Audio 

Audio Format(s): Cantonese 5.1 DTS-HD MA, Cantonese 2.0 DTS-HD MA

Subtitles: English

Dynamics:  This is a good track, accurately depicting the onscreen events.  There is a nice balance of score, effect and voice.  There is some blending, but most of the time they feel loose and on their own.  The track does  a solid job of pitting the viewer in the action.

Low Frequency Extension:  Some good hits on the score as well as things crashing, exploding, burning and axes hacking away.

Surround Sound Presentation:  Some action noises come from the rear, but its mainly ambiance and score.  There are some great moments with right/left/center interaction and volume placement is accurate to screen.

Dialogue Reproduction:  Loud, clear and front-heavy.

Extras 

All you get is a trailer.  You’re not worthy of anything else.

Trailer (HD, 2:04)

Summary 

As The Light Goes Out was a movie I wasn’t too enamored with.  Some of the action bits were pretty fun and terrific, but I don’t know that I’d recommend sitting through this almost two hour film as they weren’t THAT good.  The presentation is merely ok and if you don’t count the inclusion of the trailer, there are zero extras to speak of.  Definitely rent this one if you’re curious, and if you like it, see if an outside Region release offers something better.