Vanguard - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Vanguard



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras: :
Final Score:


​

Movie
Jackie Chan was once the world’s biggest martial arts action star. He rose to fame in the 70s with hits like Drunken Master, shot international acclaim during the 90s with hits like Supercop, Rumble in the Bronx, and many more, peaking around the late 90s and early 2000s with his Rush Hour flicks. I grew up absolutely IDOLIZING Jackie Chan, with both him and Jean Claude Van Damme inspiring me to start practicing Martial arts at the good old age of 14. However, the 21st century saw a steep decline in his popularity, and as the aging star no longer was doing insane stunts (what brought him his fame originally), he faded off of American screens, and has been doing low budget work in Mainland China for years now. Sadly those movies have generally been abysmal (though his Police Story 5 effort was actually rather good), leaving me rather turned off by his latest works. HOWEVER, seeing Stanley Tong’s name in the director/writer credits for Vanguard immediately peaked my curiosity. Tong was the director who shot Chan to international stardom during the 90s, but sort of petered out in the mid 2000s and has only done a few films in the last 10+ years. Being that it was a return to form for both director and actor, I was willing to give the film a shot, especially since some of my favorite classic Jackie Chan movies were directed by Tong in the past.

The film turned out to be a middle of the road of both great and bad extremes, with Tong’s influence feeling decidedly old school, and Chan relegating his star status to supporting roles in order allow younger and more agile martial artists to shine. The movie didn’t exactly do great in China, and did abysmally over here in the U.S. theatrically (some blame is of course on Covid, but it looks like Chan’s star is fading even in his own country), but the flick is not bad. Vanguard tries to blend elements of James Bond, his 1990s super cop antics, and a little bit of Mainland Chinese patriotism all at once. While the story is as generic as they come (super agent has to protect the daughter of a man who has gotten himself in too deep with the wrong people), but the action is fast moving, and the high tech 007 devices are fun to watch.

The title of the film is also the name of the security agency that the film revolves around. Vanguard is a high tech security firm in China who has fingers in just about every pie. Failing to prevent a kidnapping of one of their clients, Vanguard sends agents out to protect his daughter and stop a terrorist from unleashing ….well….terror on the world. The organization is run by CEO Tang Huanting (Jackie Chan), who is informed early on that one of his big clients, Qin Guoli (Jackson Lou) has been kidnapped in London. Sending his best agents to take care of the situation. They manage to save their client, and to make sure that Qin Guoli’s daughter Fareedan (Xu Ruohan) is safe, the agency uses the same agent who protected Qin Guili to keep the head hunters from kidnapping her to use as leverage against him.

The film sort of yo yos about during the hour and 47 minute runtime, with elements of James bond, cheesy humor indicative of Stanley Tong, and some inane logic errors that will have you chuckling. Fareedan is a wild life activist and model (cuz, why not), and the bad guys are your typical middle Eastern hijab wearing super villains. Things like gold cars (that actually drive, even though they’re made of heavy HEAVY gold worth $100,000,000 each), and high tech gadgets are all over the place. At first it seems sort of ludicrous, but after about 15 minutes I realized that checking your brain at the door was imperative to enjoy the film.




Rating:

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence including prolonged gun battles, and some language




Video:

The digitally shot film looks glorious in it’s digital shininess, with fantastic detail levels, amazingly saturated colors (that red dragon at the beginning of the Chinese New Years festival is jaw dropping with how bright and saturated the red is), and great black levels. Everything is perfectly visible to the naked eye without any major imperfections, and the only minor imperfections being the occasional soft scene, or the VERY obvious low budget CGI (the animals are the worst, but the cars and buildings look video gamish when they get all CGI laden). Black levels are deep and inky, with almost no banding present (the only noticeable banding that I saw was in the opening credits), and fine detail levels in the darkness is great. All around great looking disc.






Audio:

Vanguard comes to Blu-ray with two 5.1 DTS-HD MA tracks, the first being labeled as Mandarin, and the second as English dub. The Mandarin track is a bit of a sneaky thing as it’s not ALL Mandarin. It’s actually part Mandarin with English subs, and part English due to many of the actors not being able to speak Mandarin. As such it’s a 50/50 thing with both languages pretty evenly distributed. The English dub is just that. ALL English with voice overs for the Mandarin parts (with Chan providing his own dub as usual). Both mixes are generally the same with just the dubbing being different, so choose whichever one suits you as both are equally great. The mix is rambunctious and action filled, complete with off the wall martial arts fights which really rope in the surround channels, and rip roaring bass for the gunfights. Dialog is evenly metered and well balanced with just a hint of being recorded lower than the other channels (barely noticeable), but one blazing action track from beginning to end.






Extras:

• The Making of Vanguard

Final Score: ​

Vanguard is rather fun, but nothing special. It’s a fairly generic super agent action movie, just without the charm and excitement of early Jackie Chan movies. Chan is personable and charming as usual, but he wisely sits out the lead role, allowing Yang Yang to play the part of the super hero agent. While it’s not abysmal like the last half dozen post 2010 Chan movies are, Vanguard is just moderately entertaining. It’s not something I would go searching out for, but if you run across it via netflix or rent it, then it’s worth chewing some porpcorn and reliving the old Jackie Chan glory days. Moderate Rental.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Jackie Chan, Yang Yang, Lun Ai, Miya Muqi, Ruohan Xu, Jackson Lou
Directed by: Stanley Tong
Written by: Stanley Tong
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, Mandarin DTS-HD MA 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
Studio: Lionsgate
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 107 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: March 9th 2021

Recommendation: Moderate Rental

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I do like Jackie Chan so will check it out once available on amazon prime/netflix.