R E V I E W :    Eastern Condors  

Reviewed 9/18/00 | Background | Movie Review | DVD Review | Recommendation

Background 

Universe / 1987 / 93 minutes
Directed by Sammo Hung

Movie: plot, performances, production, rating

Set just as the Vietnam War is ending, Sammo Hung's take on The Dirty Dozen boils down the first hour of the earlier film (wherein the disgraced and death-sentenced soldiers are introduced and trained) into about ten minutes and dives right into the action. That makes for a more quickly-moving movie (Eastern Condors runs only about half as long as The Dirty Dozen) but also a less involving story: when the characters inevitably begin to die, it's hard to care too much. (Postscript: After watching the movie, watch the trailer that's included: there you will see a number of scenes excerpted that did not make the final cut. Most of the cut scenes appear to be from training sequences. So it looks like these early scenes, which might have helped flesh out the characters, were trimmed for the sake of expediency -- or to fit more showings of the movie into theaters each day. Too bad.)

Also, whatever subtext the earlier film may have carried is lost. This is a little ironic, considering that The Dirty Dozen, released in June 1967 as protests against the Vietnam War began to mount in America, was seen as a patriotic rebuff, even though it was set in World War ii. After all, the scoundrels give up their independent attitudes and allow themselves to be shaped into a team, ultimately sacrificing themselves for the greater good. Eastern Condors throws out all that baggage, too, since some of the "heroes" are Vietnamese criminals who had been trying to escape their homeland for a better place (to commit crimes more freely?) once the war began.

Nonetheless, Eastern Condors is action-filled, brutal, and completely bereft of serious thought. Several sequences add a unique HK flavor to the tired genre of war movies. Sammo Hung looks mean and lean. Yuen Biao is impressive in his fight sequences. Dr. Haing S. Nor (The Killing Fields) is also on hand, as are directors Yuen Woo Ping and Cory Yuen. Despite the success of the fight scenes, this is still a rather routine movie taken as a whole.

DVD: look, sound, subtitles, and features

The print is not very good in places. The opening sequences especially display many blemishes and blotches. Most of the remainder of the film looks pretty good for its age. Surround sound is used sparingly but effectively.

Widescreen (2:35), Cantonese/Mandarin DD 5.1 audio tracks, multilingual subtitles (traditional & simplified Chinese, English, Indonesian, Malaysian, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Thai).

Also has "stars' files" for Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, a trailer for the film, and trailers for Prodigal Son and Winners and Sinners. All the trailers are widescreen and in DD 2.0.

Buy, rent, or pass?

Well-done, but ultimately run-of-the-mill war movie saved only by the nice HK touches added throughout and good fight scenes at the end. Worth a rental.

 

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