This Golden Harvest action thriller produced by Raymond Chow makes its worldwide Blu–ray debut from a brand new 2K restoration, and it’s quite an exciting watch. But it’s not quite a martial arts movie in the true sense, as even though it contains a degree of foot and fist action the bouts are short and sweet and devoid of the long and protracted fights common in Hong Kong films from the post-Bruce Lee era.
Despite this, The Double Crossers is still recommended as it has quite a strong story with appealing characters portrayed by unfamiliar actors who are nevertheless effective in the roles they play. The story involves a young detective (Shin Il – Ryong), who’s out for revenge on the smuggling ring responsible for killing his parents. It helps that the movie is set in colourful Indonesian locations rather than the usual streets of Hong Kong and the various chases and shoot-outs benefit hugely from this.
The disc presents the movie in the original Mandarin language with newly translated English titles and also an English dubbed export version which was the version this reviewer chose as I personally grew up watching these movies this way and I am a sucker for the typical “Hey you, you killed my father” type dialogue which permeates such movies and which always provide several belly laughs to the proceedings.
Although The Double Crossers can hardly be described as a classic of the genre, Eureka once again must be applauded for making such rare movies available, and this provides an appetizer to the Jimmy Wang Yu classic A Man Called Tiger shortly due to be available to fight-happy fans. Extras are sparse on The Double Crossers, but there is a fact-filled audio commentary by East Asian film experts plus a limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film. All in all another pleasing package!
THE DOUBLE CROSSERS is available now from Eureka Entertainment
