Review by Leonard Norwitz
Studio:
Theatrical: Media Asia & Milky Way
Blu-ray: Media Asia Group (HK)
Disc:
Region: FREE!
(as verified by the
Momitsu region FREE Blu-ray player)
Runtime: 1:26:54.583
Disc Size: 24,169,390,990 bytes
Feature Size: 22,543,067,136 bytes
Video Bitrate: 27.83 Mbps
Chapters: 20
Case: Standard Blu-ray case
Release date: November 11th, 2009
Video:
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Resolution: 1080p / 24 fps
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video
Audio:
Dolby TrueHD Audio Chinese 1975 kbps 7.1 / 48 kHz / 1975
kbps / 16-bit (AC3 Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps)
Dolby Digital Audio Chinese 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio Chinese 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps
Subtitles:
English, Chinese (traditional + simplified), none
Extras:
• Making of – in SD (12:12)
• Trailer
The Film:
7
Any accident might be a cleverly manipulated murder, and
there are those who contract themselves out as specialists
in arranged accidental deaths. We witness one such elaborate
scheme at the start of Soi Cheang’s movie – a film that
obviously owes much to Francis Coppola’s
The Conversation – minus Gene Hackman. Accident
is every bit as dizzying, more so, I think, than
Coppola's film, as his protagonist becomes swept away by
fears that the competition has targeted him. "Brain" is a
very careful planner. He is exacting and patient, willing to
abort a job if every detail is not exquisitely in place
seconds before the ax falls.
No mere artifice, Soi Cheang’s off-kilter images work well
here, as befits the subject. Editing also is appropriately
dizzying, keeping his audience teetering on one side or the
other of sanity and believability. In Coppola's movie, Harry
Caul is a surveillance expert whose rule is never to become
emotionally or morally involved with why his client may be
hiring him. When he witnesses fragments of a conversation
that suggest the possibility of murder – his client's or his
target's, he is not sure – his not so latent paranoid
personality begins to get the better of him. In Chaeng's
movie, "Brain," as he is known to his team, remains detached
not only from his quarry but from his associates as well.
Brain is careful to a fault, allowing for no slipups –
almost. When one of his team is mowed down in what appears
to be an accident, he begins to wonder if he wasn't the
target, perhaps by the competition. Harry Caul has nothing
on this guy when it comes to splicing together a plausible
scenario for murder.
I liked the pacing of Chaeng's film – often we are witness
to long stretches of planning that seems to go nowhere, and
as the action tightens in the final reels, we lose our
balance, as does Brain. Yet there were areas of the film
that gave me pause. The first, where a body suddenly falls
from a great height and lands impossibly 150 feet or more
from the closest building is not a deal breaker, and is soon
forgotten. But the second, which places in our minds how the
execution of the plan leads to the execution of the target,
while dazzling, is implausible, and therefore asks us to
accept the method as genius, when it is simply complex and
fortuitous. Watch closely and you cannot help but see that
it depends for its success on unlikely reactions by the
victim, not once, but twice (Why does he get out of his car?
– I would have simply backed up – and why does he pull the
banner from its source? – I would have simply removed it
from my car.)
If you are lucky enough to be taken in by the director's
slight-of-hand, this snag is likely to be erased from your
mind completely when Brain aborts their next assignment
repeatedly only moments before execution because of some
detail not being exactly in place. We are led, posthumously,
to believe that the same care was taken in the first
instance, which it certainly was. But one cannot always
count on the behavior of the victim, no matter how well
studied, any more than the accidental reflection from a
passing object.
Also, I'm not entirely convinced by the direction and
casting of Louis Koo. Though his character is deliberately
directed as stiff, contained and detached, Koo - while this
may be his best and most intriguing performance to date and
who is in nearly every scene - is too much the fashion plate
and a little young, I thought. While I mentioned Gene
Hackman, I really see Ray Milland as he was in
The Thief and
The Big Clock in this role. Tony Leung Chiu Wai
would have been nice. But it’s not all Koo’s doing. As
director Soi Cheang presents him to us, Ho Kwok Fai (like
his alias “The Brain”) is emotionally dead already, his wife
having been killed in an accident that, as he comes to see
it, was targeted for himself. (Let’s hear it for guilt run
amuck.) It would take an actor of consummate skill and a
writer/director that offers more than a shred of layering to
keep us interested in a character whose only internal life
is fear.
All this said, the story is another matter entirely.
Accident is, for the most part, intelligent and thoughtful -
certainly worth viewing, despite my complaints. It must also
be given credit as a thriller without a gunshot fired, a
kick in the face, or a car being chased – proof that none of
these are necessary for a movie to have dramatic tension and
emotional power, which this does. Its final half hour is a
masterpiece of paranoiac devolution, and would make a
fascinating double bill with Polanski’s
Repulsion.
Image:
9/9
NOTE:
The below
Blu-ray
captures were ripped directly from the
Blu-ray
disc.
The first number indicates a relative level of excellence
compared to other Blu-ray video discs on a ten-point scale.
The second number places this image along the full range of
DVD and Blu-ray discs.
Media Asia has outdone itself on this one: a very strong
image with a high bit rate and hardly a trace of digital
manipulation on transfer, and only minor flecks. Our
concerns about the drastically oversaturated, overexposed,
high contrast, bloody accident that begins the movie are
quickly laid to lest in a series of perfectly drawn shots of
natural color and exposure. Detail and texture are superb.
Check out the jackets worn by Brain, or the screencap
closeup as he listens in on a fateful conversation.
CLICK EACH
BLU-RAY
CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION
Audio & Music:
8/7
The arranged accident in the rain is near nine-minute tour
de force that seems deliberately designed for surround sound
enthusiasts with the ability to make use of uncompressed
audio files. Expect to be enthralled with every imaginable
force of rain, save hail, every possible surface it strikes,
from umbrellas to tin roofs to the sound heard from
corridors to falling onto passing vehicles. There's a spot
of lightning, too (but, curiously, not a corresponding
amount of thunder) – the audio never in your face, but
subtle, nuanced, as it should be – after all, it has to keep
our attention for nine minutes while most of that time, the
actors wait for their cue from Brain to spring into action.
Some time later Brain begins to hear activity from the room
above his apartment. On the ceiling he has already mapped
out the floor plan and location of important pieces of
furniture. As he hears movement, the surround channels kick
in with heightened effect: our own ceiling comes alive with
import. But here, there is no subtlety. Brain's perceptual
abilities have become oversaturated. He has lost his ability
to remain detached.
Operations:
4
I don't much see the sense in a 3-part Making-of set, when
one would have sufficed, especially in that each part is
precisely 4:04 long! And it's such a drag to migrate back to
the menu just to watch the next part, which isn't even
described other than by a number. Subtitles are clean, with
only a few English usage errors.
Extras:
3
The 12-minute Making-of trilogy (each part 4 minutes, 4
seconds) looks promising and worth a look, even for those of
us who do not understand Chinese, for there are no other
subtitles.
Bottom line:
7
There’s a pretty good idea for a movie here, even if not
entirely novel. Produced by Johnnie To, directed by the
unlikely Soi Cheang (Shamo and Dog Bite Dog), much of what
is needed to make it work – the story, the visuals, the
editing, the emotional tension - is there. And it looks and
sounds terrific on Blu-ray. English subtitles for the Making
of feature would have been nice, but then this BRD was not
made with the likes of me in mind. A qualified
recommendation.
Leonard Norwitz
December 9th, 2009
