Review of Winners And Sinners

Introduction

Winners and Sinners has a picture of Jackie Chan on the front, which is a bit naughty considering he`s in the film for about 15-minutes. Sammo Hung leads the main cast with plenty of familiar faces (Jimmy Chen, Richard Ng and John Sham) as the characters coming together after a spell in prison for various petty crimes. Trying to go straight they fall into a counterfeiting operation and get themselves into bother with the local crime boss.

Combining comedy and action is not an easy thing to do well. Do you try and balance it, or go for more of one than another? Moreover, what happens to the story in all of this?

Video

Presented with a 1.78:1 widescreen enhanced video transfer Winners and Sinners looks very 80s thanks to the production design. Colours are restrained and detail is fair. Contrast is all right and there`s some dirt from start to finish, but nothing that gets in the way of the film. Apart from some grain, I couldn`t spot any problems with the video transfer.

Audio

You can pick from either a Chinese or English dubbed Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Leaving the hilarity of the English dubbed track to one side, the Chinese track sounded fine. The sound comes from the front speakers with dialogue from the centre. The film hardly wakes the rears and there`s a little LFE action where there`s on screen action. Dialogue is clear from the front speakers and I couldn`t hear any real problems with the soundtrack.

Features

Easy to navigate menus with just a few worthy extras:

• Audio Commentary with Bey Logan - Bey provides his usual high-quality commentary and in this case it`s more entertaining than the film.

• Teapot Tango: An interview with Sammo Hung (widescreen enhanced, subtitled) (13:30) - Sammo talks about the film and its characters, as well as the stunts. This is a short and mildly interesting piece.

• The Man Behind the Legend (widescreen enhanced) (20:01) - Friends of Sammo relate various anecdotes about the man and this is interspersed with movie clips from various Sammo Hung films. This was interesting to watch at least once.

• Trailers - UK promotional and original theatrical trailers, as well as trailers for other Hong Kong Legends and Premier Asia titles.

The film comes with clear, easy to read English subtitles, which contradict the English language audio!

Conclusion

I have to admit that I was disappointed with this film. I like a good mix of fighting, action, humour and story when it comes to Sammo Hung films, but Winners and Sinners is lacking in those areas. The five different characters here, some of whom come together again in My Lucky Stars, are the main focus of the story, but the film spends too much time trying to create comedic situations against what should be the main driving piece, the story about counterfeiting. As a result I found myself waiting for some decent action and something which would drive the whole film forward but quickly got bored. We start the film with an introduction to each of our heroes and they inadvertently get caught up in a money counterfeiting operation with Jackie Chan`s character, sadly however the main story becomes a b-storyline and we follow these hapless men as they try getting work fresh out of prison.

There are some good fighting and action scenes, but this seems to be all the film is about. Even the most modicum of story to keep the pace going would help it a fair bit. If you`re looking for a Jackie Chan film, this won`t be it as he spends less than 15-minutes in it; it`s more Sammo and his friends so I feel misled when I see the front cover with Jackie on it. The picture and sound quality of the DVD are okay, and it features a very good Bey Logan commentary, but the film itself lacks focused storytelling and there`s only so much entertainment to be had with the scenes as is.