Comrades: Almost A Love Story [HK Version]: Technical Notes

This is the early Mei Ah dvd of Comrades. I stumbled upon a review of the Mei Ah import and was baffled to hear that it's got removable subtitles and a menu. Only guess is that Mei Ah prepared it for re-release and never got round to distributing in Asia. If you order it from places like Poker Industries, chances are that you may get the re-issue but there's no way of knowing because they only list one dvd version. What a mess! Despite having an advantage of a 5.1 soundtrack and removable subtitles this review actually prefers the transfer with burned in subtitles. Judge for yourself, I'm happy with my current release.

It's presented in it's original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. It has quite noticeable wear and colours are a bit muted. Sharpness is ok and that's the overall impression of this presentation.

Soundtracks comes in Cantonese and Mandarin Dolby Digital 2.0. It basically only uses the front stage for music and this movie doesn't require much else. Dialogue is at times a little distorted but works fine throughout. There's both Cantonese and Mandarin (plus a few bits in English) on the canto track but the Mandarin dub actually redid Leon Lai's Mandarin dialogue for example.

The subtitles are burned in but are very well translated and thought out. They're readable at all times and there was actual effort to provide a good translation of Peter Chan's movie. There's no extras or even a set up menu.