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Eastern Condors
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List Price: $9.98
Our Price: $9.98
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Lung Chan, Kwok Keung Cheung, Kar Lok Chin, Billy Chow, Joyce Godenzi
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0024543100935
Format: Anamorphic
Label: 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2003-12-30
Running Time: 97
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Theatrical Release Date: 1986
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Editorial Reviews:
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A hugely entertaining, Dirty Dozen-style combat film about a group of Asian American ex-con GIs, dropped into postpullout Vietnam to destroy a cache of weapons the Yanks forgetfully left behind. ("Why are foreigners so stupid?" wonders a puzzled Chinese officer.) Director-star Sammo Hung slimmed down to play the tough-as-nails platoon commander and turned in a world-class action-star performance, charismatic and tightly focused. As a director Hung displays great sweep and inventiveness in the staging of action; there are combinations of martial arts stunt work and camera angles here that are like nothing you've ever seen before. The fighters practically leap into your lap. The movie is basically crisp hard-boiled entertainment, but it also gets into the tensions between the various Asian nationalities involved in the mission--native Chinese, Chinese American, Vietnamese, Cambodian--and into everybody's mixed feelings about the U.S. --David Chute
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Bad Movie
Comment: the only reason i rate the movie one because i cant give it a zero
worst movie ever made
dont waste your money on it
Customer Rating:
Summary: 4.5, but gotta give it a 4 cause I have always felt that the final fight is overrated
Comment: But the fight scenes as a whole are awesome. this is possible my favorite yuen biao performance as he plays the pretty boy who is a bad boy. A bit out of place, but he is is top top top form. Add in Sammo(he stars and directs in this), Billy Chow, Yuen Wah, lam Ching Ying, Yasaiki Kuratu, Woo-ping, Phillip Ko...
Not all these guys fight, but most do, and you WILL be happy. I thought that there also was too much gun play with people gruesomely being shot in the head. But then the guns get intersting and it is certainly not your average 1980's extremely low budget movie. They put some freaking time into this thing.
So the movie is a true classic of the genre(not the war one) and it is truly an epic experience for people like me who are both old chool kung fu fans and love movies like Platoon. Platoon happens to be my favorite movie ever so I certainly can't compare it to that, but beats the holy hell out of ANY war movie in terms of INSANE stunts and hand to hand combat. And Sammo also has a very nice scene with a machetti, but then it gets even better when he gets hold of the heavy duty machine gun. It was just such a brilliant mix of war and kung fu. There will never be another movie like this. And tell me if the 3 guerilla women are not you're new favorite characteres. I know I will certainly be checking out Joyce Godenzi's works:)
The picture quality is PERFECTO without a blemish on the print. Best Fox release I have seen yet. Also it has dual languages in 5.1 sound, you gotta love that.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hysterically funny
Comment: When I first watched it I thought to myself "this is so bad it's funny". After watching a little further I finally realized that it was a parody. I found it funnier if I watched it in 4:3 ratio instead of letterboxing, maybe because it cued in more on all those bad martial arts/action movies I'd seen before on television. Outstanding comedy/action (how many in this genre are there?)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Slow and Poorly done
Comment: Although it has a couple of good actors the movie itself was very poorly done with a lot of work needed on the speech syncronization. The action was slow and unrealistic.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Entertaining Hong Kong war movie in a sparkling DVD edition
Comment: While it's not flawless, this Fox DVD edition of EASTERN CONDORS is clearly the best we've ever seen of this 1987 Hong Kong action classic. Sammo Hung, the star and director, had graduated from old school kung fu films to contemporary stunt-filled action comedies with his Peking Opera classmates, Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao, and then a new direction (minus Jackie) with his all-star action comedy, MILLIONAIRES' EXPRESS in 1986. EASTERN CONDORS borrows liberally from THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967) and THE DEER HUNTER (1978), while injecting massive doses of kung fu, acrobatics, gunfire, black humor and tragedy into its tale of Asian and Asian-American military prisoners ("the Condors") sent on a dangerous mission into Vietnam in 1976, a year after the American withdrawal.
The Condors' mission in Vietnam is to find and destroy an underground cache of American weapons to keep it out of Vietnamese hands. When they get to Vietnam they hook up with a trio of female Cambodian guerrillas (led by fighting femme Joyce Godenzi) who act as guides, but have an ulterior motive of their own. The group also picks up a local Cantonese-speaking black market dealer who's expert in kung fu (Yuen Biao). Thanks to a spy in the group, the Vietnamese army follows the Condors' every move.
The nonstop action is quite cleverly staged, although some of it is a bit far-fetched. The characters and their relationships are generally quite interesting and we tend to feel sadness and grief when a member of the group dies (or is seriously wounded or maimed). Partly filmed in Canada, with outdoors action shot in the Philippines, the film offers a spectacular climax staged in an underground weapons complex designed and built to resemble the sets Ken Adam built for so many James Bond films.
The film's expert cinematography is finally given a transfer that allows us to appreciate it in widescreen with 16:9 enhancement. However, both the English-dubbed and Cantonese language tracks are slightly but noticeably out of sync. The English dub is pretty awful. The subtitles for the Cantonese track are not the original ones we saw in earlier editions of the film. They're "dub-titles," transcriptions of the English dub dialogue which is far less interesting and dramatic than accurate translations of the original dialogue. So don't discard your earlier copies.
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