20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Kiss of the Dragon
Martial
arts have always offered a mystical side of the orient and Hollywood has cashed
in big on its appeal to the masses. Kiss of the Dragon is a high impact
action movie staring martial arts expert Jet Li as a Chinese government agent
(Liu Jian) who goes to Paris to aid in a secret mission. Soon after his arrival,
Jian
finds himself being framed by a
corrupt police official played by Tchéky Karyoet (Richard)
whom he was assigned to help. The only
proof Jian
has is a video tape that recorded tape murder and Richard's in hot pursuit to
find it. Part of Liu's mystic ways includes a collection of small needles (similar
to acupuncture needles) on a pair of wristbands that he uses throughout the movie
to help save lives as well as take them. The film has some very good fight scenes
between Lui and those who are part of the corrupt French law enforcement and deserves
some top points in the violence category. Bridget Fonda (Jessica) plays a hooker
forced to work the streets for Richard
while her young daughter is being held hostage. The fight scenes are well choreographed
and deserve some praise for keeping the all-too-common fight scenes interesting.
The settings are familiar to those who travel, particularly with some of the famous
landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and the River Seine. Kiss of the Dragon will keep
you entertained particularly if you enjoy martial arts action.
Picture/Sound
Quality
The video transfer is very impressive and on par with most of the
D-Theater movies we have seen on the D-VHS format. The 1080i video resolution
was excellent with a slight softness to the picture. The picture had good detail
exhibiting a small amount of low noise grain in dark scenes, but was otherwise
impressive. Colors looked natural and consistent throughout the movie. Artifacts
were minimal and we never experienced any dropouts with the D-VHS/D-Theater format.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is encoded at a bit rate of 576 kb/s and sounded excellent with well balanced and aggressive surrounds. Full channel separation worked well with the action. The LFE channel exhibited deep bass extension making for an exciting presentation.
Kiss of the
Dragon offers an impressive home theater experience with both excellent audio
and video quality. The action will certainly exercise the capabilities of your
system. The culmination of pristine video and high quality audio pushes the limits
of the technology currently available to consumers.
-
Kevin Nakano