Mercenaries from Hong Kong Blu-ray Screenshots (Patreon)

Video

Sharing disc space with The Boxer's Omen, Mercenaries from Hong Kong utilized a hard, gritty film stock. This means thick grain in darker corners of the frame, and plentiful grit elsewhere. Luckily, even with the double feature, the disc doesn't show signs of losing fidelity due to compression. It's a sublime encode for a difficult source.

Mercenaries from Hong Kong isn't the most textured offering in the Shaw Brother library. Cinematography favors hazier and softer imagery, reducing sharpness at the source. Still, this carries a notable HD look, pure and refined. The print itself remains free from imperfections overall, never soured by scratches or dirt.

Satisfying contrast helps alleviate doubts over the lighter black levels. Luckily, shadows stay deep enough to avoid revealing noise or other artifact within them. Also pleasing, the color saturation serves as a highlight, enhancing every primary close to a bleed, but restrained enough to avoid any issues.

Audio

Cantonese, Mandarin, and English mono all come in DTS-HD form. Sticking with the default Mandarin, Mercenaries from Hong Kong lacks the aural spectacle of western action movies from this era, but the stock gunshots and explosions fare well enough, considering. Overall clarity is low, bland, and a few times strained, but the rocking score does ignite the subwoofer in places.