Review by Leonard Norwitz
Studio:
Theatrical: MK Pictures
Blu-ray: MegaStar (Media Asia/Hong Kong)
Disc:
Region: All
Runtime: 124 min
Chapters: 20
Size:
Case: Standard Amaray Blu-ray case
Release date: June 16, 2008
Video:
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Resolution: 1080p
Video codec: AVC
Audio:
Mandarin DTS-HD Master Audio 6.1; Cantonese & Mandarin
DD EX 5.1
Subtitles:
Feature: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese,
English. Bonus: None
Extras:
• Trailers in HD
• B-Rolls (6:00)
The Film:
YesAsia: China's foremost commercial filmmaker Feng
Xiaogang lives up to his name with the blockbuster war
film Assembly. Pulling in over 23 millian yuan at the
domestic box office, Assembly outgunned even The
Warlords which was screening concurrently. After years
of satirical comedies, Feng's films have gotten
progressively bigger in recent years, starting with
2004's A World Without Thieves to 2006's star-studded
period piece The Banquet. Based on a novel by Yang
Jinyuan, Assembly continues this trend in scale and
production, but where The Banquet is glossy, Assembly is
gritty, pulling in audiences not with star power, but
the magnitude of the war experience. Assembly's
realistic battle scenes and brilliant camerawork have
earned the film comparisons to Saving Private Ryan, but
equally powerful is the human drama that follows the
war. - From YesAsia
HERE
LensViews:
The Movie: 8
You are in command of an infantry company with orders to
take control of a part of a town already decimated by
heavy artillery. The enemy is probably entrenched, but
you can't be certain. You send in a few men to
reconnoiter. The trap is sprung and your advance men and
many of the remainder are caught up in the crossfire.
You want to order a retreat and regroup, but your
political officer insists that such an act would be
cowardly and unacceptable, even if it means the death of
most or all of your men. Luckily your men break free,
but at considerable cost.
You are reprimanded, but find a new dedication to the
goals of the Party so that next time you'll be a little
more hesitant to fall back. And so it happens that in
the next mission, where you are to hold a position in
the face of an advancing army of overwhelming
proportions, you might not even hear the call to retreat
– the call for Assembly.
A couple years later, the 47 men of your company are
officially listed as missing in action, which means they
and their surviving families are not entitled to the
rights and privileges of the honored dead. And, indeed,
they are missing, having vanished without a trace.
There's not even a clear record of your own identity.
You know they died bravely and so you dedicate your life
to
clearing their names – but first you have to find what
remains of them.
As we would expect, the performances in this movie are
heartfelt and passionate. Zhang Hanyu (World Without
Thieves) is Captain Gu Zidi, whose humble backstory is
revealed only hesitantly. Zhang is riveting, his face
unabashedly wearing the battle scars he acquires from
one war to the next – with Japan in WWII, his own
country's revolution, then the war in Korea.
The battle scenes are directed and photographed from the
perspective of a photojournalist, with stills
reminiscent of WWII photographs. But when things start
to happen, one hardly knows where to turn next or from
where to expect the next piece of ordinance that could
and would decimate you or the person next to you. I
found the persistent jerky hand-held photography,
combined with dropped frames, to be a bit much – more a
fashionable device than an artistic necessity, though it
certainly gets across the presence of a fearful and
commanding chaos.
Megastar brings us both The Warlords and Assembly a
month apart. The time frame of the action in these two
films is less than a hundred years (though they seemed
to me to be more like 300 hundred), and civilization,
even in China, has found new and more powerful means of
killing itself off. But loyalty to a cause and, more
important, to brothers in arms, is no less potent. In
the context of present day means of annihilation, the
notion of sacrifice may seem a bit archaic, but it seems
to find its way into the hearts of man – for better and
worse.
Excerpt of review from YesAsia editorial located HERE
Image:
8/8.5
The first number indicates a relative level of
excellence compared to other Blu-ray DVDs on a ten-point
scale. The second number places this image along the
full range of DVDs, including SD 480i.
As has become the fashion for some Asian films in recent
years, the color for Assembly is noticeably desaturated,
almost to the point of a cool monochrome in the battle
scenes that occupy so much of the first half of the
film. Noticeably less so in the interregnum. I
questioned the lighting in certain indoor scenes, as I
was unable to account for how such interiors could have
so
much light – it did take me out of the movie from time
to time. Bit rates tend to be in the mid-teens, which
may account in part for a certain lack of density of
image. Digital manipulation has its effects as well,
though I found them to be well integrated.
Audio & Music:
7/7
For a war film, I was surprised that the audio was not
as forceful nor as dynamic as I would have expected.
Whomping bass and impact was somewhat subdued. Even the
surrounds were not engaged as fully as I expected,
considering the chaos of the moment. I thought at first
this might have been intentional, in keeping with the
focus on character, rather than effects, but I found it
out of
balance with the faux documentary photographic style.
Perhaps a second viewing will find me more
understanding.
Operations:
6
Assembly is quick to load, with just a couple of logos
for MegaStar and Media Asia but no promotional
theatrical or video previews. My one complaint is that
the chapter thumbnails are not only small, but have the
chapter numbers plastered over them large enough to
obliterate recognition of the image behind it. None too
bright, I thought. The English translation was pretty
much error-free and idiomatic. The subtitles remained
within the frame.
Extras:
3
Besides HD trailers for Assembly, Perhaps Love, Infernal
Affairs, Initial D and The Warlords, there are three
B-rolls, each about 2 minutes, where Director Feng
Xiaogang instructs his cast in various action sequences.
There are no subtitles, but they are hardly necessary –
the action speaks for itself.
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Bottom line:
8
Assembly has not yet received Western distribution to
speak of, possibly because it can't be readily
pigeonholed as either a war film (where U.S. forces are
engaged briefly, by the way) or as a personal journey.
In any case, it is deserving of our interest on all the
usual relevant grounds: an engaging script, compelling
performances and vivid battle scenes. Despite my various
caveats, the Blu-ray presentation of the feature film is
of very high quality. One final thought regarding the
number of dead in Captain Gu's company – 47! – sound
familiar? The number is repeated often enough to make an
impression – and in this case, the parallel to
Chushingura is all the more fitting.
Leonard Norwitz
September 6th, 2008
