- Actors: Jet Li, Xun Zhou, Kun Chen, Lunmei Kwai, Yuchun Li
- Directors: Hark Tsui
- Format: PAL
- Number of discs: 1
- Classification: 15
- Studio: Revolver Entertainment
- DVD Release Date: 29 Oct 2012
- Run Time: 121 minutes
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Languages Mandarin - DTS-HD Master Audio (5.1) Subtitles English
lying Swords of Dragon Gate 3D Blu-ray, Video Quality

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate is presented on Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D courtesy of Indomina Releasing and Vivendi Visual with AVC (2D) and MVD (3D) encoded transfers (on separate discs) in 2.39:1. Hark and cinematographer Choi Sung-fai start things off with a brightly colored seascape where the first big fight scene takes place, but then the bulk of the rest of the film is consigned to barren desert locales that tend to favor a brown and beige palette. Clarity is exceptional in virtually all of the scenes, even those with CGI sand whipping through the frame. Contrast Is extremely strong and consistent and colors, while muted, are appropriately saturated and look very accurate. (The film really bears little sign of aggressive color grading in post).
The 3D presentation here is nothing short of amazing, certainly one of the strongest 3D outings I've seen recently. Hark consistently places objects in the forefront of virtually every shot which immediately creates depth. Sometimes this will be an actor, at other times a prop like a piece of a fence or even a cup or bowl, but the depth of this 3D presentation is really immersive almost all of the time. In fact for those of you who like me get a little queasy with too many objects in the foreground passing by quickly in tracking shots may want to be forewarned that Hark tends to prefer exactly that kind of establishing shot a lot of the time. There are the typical "tricks" scattered throughout the film which involve everything from the aforementioned logs spilling out toward the viewer, to a flock of birds overtaking a cave on the outskirts of the Dragon Gate Inn, to some fantastic fight sequences that see the combatants repeatedly coming straight at the camera, often with a prop either in front of them or following close behind. Because of the film's generally muted palette, there's very little diminution in vibrancy noticeable in the 3D presentation.
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate 3D Blu-ray, Audio Quality

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate has a fantastically immersive lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix in the original Mandarin. While it's obvious many of the actors have been post-looped (and none too effectively at times, at least in terms of matching lip movements), once you can get past that very typical anomaly, the rest of the film is just a riot of brilliant sound design and fantastic surround activity. While one expects the fight sequences to be awash in the quicksilver sound of blades striking each other and the pummeling of fists and feet (which of course is completely what happens throughout the film), some of the best effects are little ambient environmental touches. My favorite, while not especially germane to anything major in the film, was when a huge assortment of cicadas started buzzing and the sound simply wafted overhead from front to rear. There's virtually no scene here that doesn't offer some sort of great surround activity. Dialogue is cleanly presented (even if it's rather poorly synched to the actors at times), and the beautiful score featuring a lot of ethnic instruments also sounds fantastic. Fidelity is spot on and dynamic range is extremely wide.



