Peking Opera Blues: An Ambitious Genre Mix with a Problematic Second Half (4K/Blu-ray)

The Film:

Next up in Shout! Studios' Hong Kong Cinema Classics series is "Peking Opera Blues," a film from screenwriter Raymond To and director Tsui Hark, whose prolific career has included several of the "Once Upon a Time in China" films, the "Detective Dee" series, "The Blade," and even the Jean-Claude Van Damme films "Double Team" and "Knock Off." "Peking Opera Blues" may not be quite as well-known as some of his other work, but with a ringing endorsement from Quentin Tarantino, who once called it one of the greatest films ever made, you have to imagine that the film is at least worth giving a try.

As the film quickly approaches its 40 anniversary next year, Shout! Studios is celebrating not only by adding it to their ongoing Hong Kong cinema series, as mentioned, but also by giving it a tremendous 4K upgrade and loading it with lots of special features, so now it's time to dive into this intriguing mixture of action, drama, and comedy to see if it's worth all the attention, and to see if Tarantino's kind words have some merit or if they're just a bit of hyperbole.

Taking place in 1920s China, the film primarily focuses on three women: Cho Wan (Brigitte Lin), a spy who's also the daughter of a general (Kenneth Tsang), Bai Niu (Sally Yeh), who grew up with an opera troupe, but is not allowed to participate, and Sheung Hung (Cherie Chung), a courtesan who stole a bunch of jewelry from General Cho's home and is trying to get it back. Cho Wan is currently on a mission that has her loyalty torn between her father and her country, as the former is helping Yuan Shikai by securing large loans that will hurt the latter. Eventually all three women become entangled in the mission, which will have them placing their lives in great danger for the sake of the country.

Peking Opera Blues" is an odd little mixture of a film. It's melodramatic, farcical, filled with action, and even somewhat gruesome & horrific at times. The story is epic in its scope, providing enough foundation to bring our three heroines together and to allow these multiple genres a chance to merge as it unfolds its narrative. As to how successfully it's able to do that, it's rather fair to say that the first half of the film accomplishes far more with its lighter, more comedic tone, delivering a number of highly-amusing scenes that help set the stage for the grand tale that the filmmakers want to tell.

However, when it comes to the second half, a rather strange tonal shift occurs that disperses with most of the light-hearted, farcical atmosphere that had permeated most of the film up to that point, one that turns the film down a much darker path that opens it up to scenes of torture & several monotonous shootouts that lead up to an unfortunately bland and somewhat lazy climax. It's the kind of shift that can easily rub the audience the wrong way, especially when the film had spent most of its time setting up something far lighter in tone, only to end up turning into something quite different. That's not to say that a darker tone is a bad thing when used correctly, but the juxtaposition here simply ends up being a little too jarring, and again, merely leads to a finale that needed a fair amount of work to make it more exciting & satisfying than what it ends up being.

Overall, "Peking Opera Blues" is hardly a bad film, but the filmmakers really needed to settle on what kind of story they wanted to tell. In their rather ambitious attempt to combine several genres, they neglected to consider the overall effect that each would have as they tried to merge them into one film, leading to the aforementioned jarring shift. There's a lot to like here, including gorgeous art direction & costume design, and an engaging narrative that's set up rather well, but what it truly needed was a more unifying tone to bring it all together and to keep it just as entertaining as it is on its outset. It was indeed quite ambitious, but in the end, it simply becomes another case of not being able to stick the landing.

Video/Audio:

This edition of "Peking Opera Blues" comes with the film on both 4K (2160p, UHD) and Blu-ray (1080p, HD) in 1.85:1 transfers of outstanding quality. The new 4K scan from the original camera negative is remarkably sharp & crisp throughout the entire 105-minute duration, beautifully highlighting the film's incredible art direction & costumes. Likewise, the 5.1 DTS-HD MA audio tracks are marvelous, giving you all of the dialogue, sound effects, and music in excellent quality. Overall, Shout! Studios has done a fantastic job in both departments for the film's new release.

Special Features:

Audio Commentary with Film Critic James Mudge

An Opus for Peking (22 Minutes)

An Operatic Achievement (11 Minutes)

Hong Kong Confidential (14 Minutes)

Peking Provocations (25 Minutes)

Peking History Blues (24 Minutes)

The film comes with an impressive selection of extras that includes a feature commentary with film critic James Mudge, as well as a little over 90 minutes worth of featurettes that consist of extensive interviews with actor Mark Cheng, cinematographer Ray Wong, authors Grady Hendrix & David West, and Professor Lars Laamann. As before, Shout! Studios has provided plenty of great material here for fans to delve into.

Conclusion:

"Peking Opera Blues" features gorgeous art direction & costumes, and starts off pretty well as it sets up its epic & ambitious tale using a mostly light & comedic tone, but sadly the second half comes with a rather jarring tonal shift that takes a surprising dark turn filled with torture, monotonous shootouts, and a bland, unsatisfying climax, ultimately making the film a mixed bag that couldn't quite achieve the intended mix of genres.

Score: 3/5

Now available on 4K/Blu-ray.

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