Millionaires' Express has Sammo Hung as a bit of a rogue who returns to his hometown, and when he discovers a new train full of rich people will be coming through, he hatches a plan to make up for his past misdeeds. The idea: blow up the train tracks so the train has to stop in his hometown, forcing the passengers to spend money there. As always though, when there's rich people, there are other opportunists, including a group of bandits who take over the town. Now Hung needs to work with local police captain Yuen Biao, and the federal agent who's been trying to bring him down, Kenny Bee, to liberate his hometown from these baddies.
This film is a classic of Hong Kong cinema, and this Arrow Blu-ray release definitely does it justice. The transfer is fantastic, and as someone who grew up watching Golden Harvest films on cheaper VHS versions, it was like having the windshield cleaned during a long road trip. The extras are great too, especially the Cynthia Rothrock interviews, but also some great ones with Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, and Yukari Oshima. Another thing that's really cool, is there are four versions of the movie: the Hong Kong theatrical cut, the extended international cut, the English export cut, and then a hybrid cut that combines everything to give us the longest possible version. What I really like about that is we get a sense of how a film is marketed for different markets, something in the past that required finding copies in Chinatown that may or may not have subtitles--and again, the quality of those copies won't compare to what you're seeing here. If I have any issues, it's the sound on Frank Djeng's commentary. For $40 MSRP, I'd expect the sound to be louder and clearer, especially when there's no CC option for it, but that's really my only issue. For the physical media collectors among us, this is a must add to your library.
Because I don't have a way to grab images from a Blu-ray, I needed to go to the trailer Arrow has on their site and get images from that. With that in mind, it was easier to get shots of Cynthia Rothrock and Richard Norton, but I don't want to give the impression that I'm spotlighting them at the expense of other great names who had bigger parts, like Yuen Biao. The thing is though, we get a lot of Rothrock in the special features, and I think her fight with Sammo Hung is such a big moment in the movie, that I feel okay spotlighting her in the second paragraph, especially since she's also the biggest name from our site in this. She has three interview extras, plus she does some select scene commentary--again with Djeng, so I had trouble hearing his questions, but could hear her responses. This was only her second film after Yes, Madam!, so in the interviews we really get a sense of how these early roles she had shaped her as an action star. In the original Hong Kong cut she only has the one fight with Hung, but in the extended cuts she has an additional scene where she and Norton have a scuffle with the rest of their fellow bandits. With all the names in this, seeing her hold her own with them at such a young stage in her career really gives us a sense of where she was headed as an action star, and the extras in this Blu-ray set enhance that perspective.
We haven't seen Sammo Hung on the site before, so this is a great first appearance. Here in the States he had a good run on Martial Law, but in Hong Kong he's one of the all-time greats, and he shows us that here, both with his performance, and his directing. He also has two great interviews in the Arrow collection, and they give us a lot of background for what he was going for. The East meets Western is the obvious one, as this has a great Western feel; but he also talked about the comedic scenes, the challenge of getting all of these names together and giving them enough screen time, and even things like how his legs went numb after he filmed too long in the snow in only his boxers. That's the thing though, Sammo could ask a lot of his actors, because he was putting himself out there too. For so long, we enjoyed these movies on lower-quality VHS, so to have a transfer worthy of the classic he directed I think can't be understated.
Just the same, while Sammo put himself out there, there were times that he asked a bit too much of his stars, especially the great Yuen Biao. In one of the most amazing stunts I've seen in a film, Biao jumps off a 4 story building and lands on some padding Sammo buried in the ground. He then jumps up and walks over to a woman before the scene cuts away. In one of the extras, Biao gives an interview where he describes what it was like doing that scene. In that same interview, he talks about his long relationship with Sammo, and how Sammo would rib him a lot like he was a younger brother. I get that, but he also obviously kidded because he loved and respected Biao, because he gives Biao a lot of great fight scenes, and Biao hits them out of the park. Unlike Sammo, we have seen Yuen Biao here at the DTVC before, when we reviewed Righting Wrongs, which he was fantastic in as well. This is the classic it is because of Biao's work, it's really electric; but it's great as well that we have that interview among the extras, because he gives us more background on his career, and that makes his scenes in the film an even better watch--which is saying a lot considering they're amazing already!
With so many names in this I'm bound to miss some, but I'll try in this paragraph to grab as many as I can. First, we had two other Hall of Famers: Richard Norton, who teamed up with Rothrock for the first time here, and not only had a great fight scene, but also met an untimely end by a samurai sword; and then Bolo Yeung had a one-scene cameo. Yukari Oshima played one of three samurais, and also had one of the interviews in the extras, in her case a 30-minute one where she gets into how she ended up in this film, and how she got her start. We've seen her before in The Story of Ricky, plus she's done some films in the Philippines, including some with the late Darren Shahlavi that I need to check out. Her scenes are next level as well, and in the interview she talked about how Hong Kong directors like Sammo just let her get after it, as opposed to Japanese directors that wanted her to hold back and not deviate from the script. Finally, two of my favorite performances were Kenny Bee as the federal agent tracking Sammo, and then the great Richard Ng, who plays Han, a philandering millionaire who's dressed like Sherlock Holmes. We've also seen Ng here before, in Yes, Madam!
And with that we'll wrap this up. Thank you again to MVD Entertainment for sending me this screener copy of the new Arrow Blu-ray release of Millionaires' Express. If you're a physical media collector, or a Hong Kong cinema collector, or someone who just likes this kind of thing, this is worth picking up and adding to your collection.
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