You know you're watching a movie (mostly) made for kids whome at the end of the film, will likely be jumping and kicking each other for the remainder of the day making all the swooshing noises to imitate the supersonic / sonic-boom 'like'? Effect of each strike,..
... when aside from all the hilariously-off aspects of the production in terms of sound/vision synch and things like matching sound effects, or someone making sure that the audience even had enough time or the object being in focus, that a sound effect was-for ... the two things that struck me at the end of the film ... completely dis-regarded,..
... were that a dying father almost completely ignores his daughter standing right there... barely says a word ... but concentrates instead on the Hero in his dying breath, even though what he ended up saying had been inferred in previous conversations, and if he'd thought for a fraction of a second about whether to repeat it, or whether to say goodbye to his daughter,.. he'd've said goodbye...
*keyboard headcrash*
:D That's the 1940s/1960s for you!
... and 2 ... that at the very end, against the main female lead, has a perfect opportunity to THANK the Hero, for helping her get revenge ... and it's completely ignored,.. and instead, we get to see Dragon's goofy smile a 4th? 5th? Time?
The actress whatever her name was must've been spitting wood-chips that day.
Lol!!! Terrible.... but so good because of that!! Utterly careless/heedless. Lol!!!
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on the production side ... there was a fair amount of realism maintained throughout it,
scenes were far-enough-back shot,
lighting was good,
and scenery never seemed unnatural or overly contrived or overly dramatized or unrealistic for the scene - very natural AND theatrical, which definitely kept the same atmosphere throughout the entire story, which meant you could concentrate on what was being focused on, and yes, i say that in full-knowledge that it's choreographed sped-up nonsense just for the kids,..
but who cares! It still looks awesome to a 4YO. :)
Could do with a remastering though - brightness could be tinted down a little and more saturation could be added, and the sound DEFINITELY needs work , although there was not constant metallic-clinging as you get in some. Mostly on-wood and on-flesh sounds.
Some humor, which broke up the constancy / monotony a bit, and that combined with Dragon's goofy smile added a nice non-realism touch for the adults concerned about over-aggression as a result of the film. Nicely balanced in that sense , but yeah... poor old whats-her-name at the end ... dad ignores her, and then the Producer/Editor / someone gives her thank you scene the cut.
Probably got cut by the production staff more than the bad guys throughout the whole movie. Might an old-footage extended version remake be possible? Put more of the gags back in,.. re-balance the gender dualism for things like i've mentioned here ... and do a lot of work on the sound, and it would be back up there as a more worthy classic.
Tons of , we'll do it our own way production-style though.
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Possibly a precursor to later films with a similar setting, where Imperial Japs have been causing indirect countrymen to end up fighting each other rather than them, in a mining context?
