The Adventurers (1995) Blu-ray Review

Eureka Entertainment

Blu-ray Release: April 29, 2025

Video: 1.85:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Cantonese/Mandarin/English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, LPCM 2.0 Stereo (original), LPCM 2.0 Stereo (restored)

Subtitles: English

Run Time: 110:34

Director: Ringo Lam

Wai Lok-yan (Andy Lau) was just eight years old when his parents were killed before his eyes in Cambodia. Taken to Thailand by his father's colleague, Seung (Rosamund Chiang), Yan grows up to join the Thai Air Force and comes to discover that his father's murderer, Ray Liu (Paul Chun), has become a wealthy arms dealer based in the United States. With the help of the CIA, Yan intends to get close to Liu and have his revenge by taking on an assumed identity and gaining the trust of Liu's daughter, Crystal (Jacklyn Wu). But, first, he will need to go undercover in San Francisco's criminal underworld to rescue her from the clutches of the Vietnamese Black Tiger Gang. (From Eureka’s official synopsis)

Of the New Wave era Hong Kong filmmakers that leveraged their international success into Hollywood careers – Jackie Chan, Tsui Hark, John Woo, Yuen Woo-ping, and Ronny Yu – Ringo Lam often seems to be the odd man out. He is fondly remembered for his work with Chow Yun-fat in Hong Kong, City on Fire (1987), Prison on Fire (1987), and Full Contact (1992) in particular, but his wider output remains overlooked and his American films never reached the wide mainstream audiences of his contemporaries. Comparisons to John Woo tend to be particularly unkind, as they’re similar filmmakers and Woo’s Hollywood career blossomed into major blockbusters. But Lam was still there, in the trenches, and even had a number one box office hit with his first US production, the Jean-Claude Van Damme/Natasha Henstridge vehicle Maximum Risk (1996).

Among Lam’s overlooked films was a sort of warm-up for Hollywood known as The Adventurers, released one year before Maximum Risk, that combined the heroic bloodshed gunplay and gangster movie machinations of his best Hong Kong films with the hyper-masculinity of American action movies (minus the prerequisite jingoism). The final act sort of references the Schwarzenegger & Stallone brand of war fantasy, but the better comparison is probably the Cannon Group’s Chuck Norris movies. Lam does an admirable job splitting the difference between serious sentimentality with romantic interludes, Hong Kong style (there is so much smoke and so many Dutch angles) action, and, of course, graphic violence.

The screenplay – by Lam, Yip Kong-yam, and Sandy Shaw – is surprisingly plot-heavy between set-pieces, not to mention extremely convoluted and relentlessly paced. The blazing narrative structure and genre shifting makes it clear that producer Tiffany Chen and China Star wanted The Adventurers to be a four-quadrant blockbuster. This extends to the cast, which is overloaded with star power, including Andy Lau, already a major marquee name on the road to being arguably the biggest film and pop star on the entire planet, Rosamund Kwan, hot off of Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China movies, Jacklyn Wu in the midst of her biggest years as actress & singer (she’s quite good in a thankless role), aging martial arts icon David Chiang, and San Francisco-born favorite Victor Wong in a cameo appearance.

Video

I don’t think The Adventurers ever had a stateside VHS release, but the film has been available on iffy quality DVDs from Tai Seng, Mei Ah, and German companies Splendid and Laser Paradise. I assume that Eureka’s 1.85:1, 1080p US/UK Blu-ray debut utilizes the same Fortune Star scan seen from the barebones BDs from Kam & Ronson in Hong Kong and Vision Gate in Germany. Fortune Star’s scans tend to be a little outdated, but generally solid. This transfer is no exception. The image is clean, elemental separation is tight, despite all of the smoke effects and shallow focus. Texture is a bit soft, but not enough to make the image blobby or uneven. Colors bleed just a little (the brightest reds in particular), black levels are consistent, and, outside of some slight blow-out here and there, highlights are tidy. Print damage is limited to fine scratches and a few black flecks.

Audio

The Adventurers features a Cantonese, Mandarin, and English multi-language soundtrack (mostly Cantonese) that is available in a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 remix, the original 2.0 stereo, and a restored 2.0 stereo mix, the latter two in uncompressed LPCM. The 5.1 mix is the loudest and possibly the cleanest, but also has an artificial quality familiar to other surround remixes. The restored stereo track is also overly crisp with some ‘canned’ effects work, but is arguably preferable to the muffled original track. All three tracks feature a vocal buzz when characters shout. Teddy Robin Kwan’s often droning synth score is punctuated by electric guitar riffs that set the raunchy mood as the film bounces from scene to scene.

Extras

• Commentary with David West – The author of Chasing Dragons: An Introduction to the Martial Arts Film (I.B. Tauris, 2006) explores the production/release of the film, Ringo Lam’s life and filmography, the wider careers of the cast & crew, and the general state of Hong Kong action on the cusp of its Hollywood breakthrough. 

• Two Adventurers (21:26, HD) – Gary Bettinson, the editor of Asian Cinema Journal, discusses the intersecting careers of Ringo Lam and Andy Lau, the duo’s collaborations (especially The Adventurers), Hong Kong action’s westward spread during the New Wave period, and its relative collapse soon after.

• Writing for the Dark-Faced God (14:26, HD) – An archival interview with writer/producer Sandy Shaw, who chats about her beginnings on television, the films that inspired her, her rise in the industry, and the division of screenwriting labor on The Adventurers.

• Theatrical trailer 

The images on this page are taken from the Blu-ray and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.