Overview: Wai Lok-yan (Lau) was just eight years old when his parents were killed before his eyes in Cambodia, where his father had been working for the CIA during Pol Pot’s ascent to power in the latter days of the Cambodian Civil War.

Taken to Thailand by his father’s colleague Seung (Chiang), Yan grows up to join the Thai Air Force and comes to discover that his father’s murderer - Ray Liu (Paul Chun, Royal Tramp), once a double agent - has now become a wealthy arms dealer based in the United States.

With the help of the CIA, Yan intends to get close to Liu and have his revenge by taking on an assumed identity and gaining the trust of Liu’s daughter, Crystal (Jacklyn Wu, A Moment of Romance) - but first he will need to go undercover in San Francisco’s criminal underworld to rescue her from the clutches of the Vietnamese Black Tiger Gang.

Made shortly before Ringo Lam departed for Hollywood to make Maximum Risk with Jean-Claude Van Damme, The Adventurers is a hidden gem amongst the many heroic bloodshed films produced in Hong Kong during the 1990s. Eureka Classics is proud to present the film on Blu-ray for the first time in North America from a brand new 2K restoration.

Blu-ray Verdict: This little seen action/revenger from Hong Kong superstar director Ringo Lam is a full-throated and nastily brutal affair at times, bedecked with some stylish and extremely expansive action but also some truly mawkish and contrived melodrama.

Beginning in 1975, a young boy witnesses his family’s execution at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and a double-crossing colleague of his fathers. Twenty years later, the boy has grown into Andy Lau, a troubled fighter pilot with only revenge on his mind.

The trouble is, the Khmer Rouge commander responsible is now a billionaire Hong Kong businessman, protected by all manner of shady political and criminal relationships. But that doesn’t stop Lau and his journey of vengeance sees him head to San Francisco where two women stand in his way – the mistress of his target (Rosamund Kwan) and his target’s daughter (Jacklyn Wu).

It begins brutally and it sets the tone for the violence throughout the film – Lam directs his action like he thinks Michael Bay is a big girl’s blouse! It’s truly in your face. It’s incredibly bloody and its supremely visceral.

Be it the brutal machine gunning of a young boy’s parents in front of him, the farmhouse raid to retrieve Wu by a rival gang or the insane Thailand set finale that sees a helicopter and a truck go at each other against an explosive backdrop that was so huge it was likely visible from space. This is the reason to see this largely forgotten entry in the heroic bloodshed genre.

Because Lam also directs his melodrama in a way that makes Bay seem like Ken Loach. The almost laughable narrative contrivances just keep stacking up as Lau suddenly becomes an underground crime boss caught between two women, a pregnancy, a bloodthirsty army general and a never-ending coterie of underground goons.

And it’s played out with a bizarre tonal whiplash that veers between naughty schoolboy comedy (Wu’s escape wearing only a towel) and horrific domestic brutality (Kwan’s beating of a pregnant Wu is uncomfortable to watch to say the least), again giving off serious Bay vibes only amped all the way up to 11!

Lau chews scenery for all its worth and he tries, bless him, he really does. But it’s such an overblown, overripe and overwritten slice of 90’s action that despite its significant weakness, and maybe even because of them, it still manages to be uproariously entertaining in exactly the same way that the Master of Bayhem’s films mostly are.

Bonus Features:
Limited edition of 2000 copies
Limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Time Tomorrow
1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a brand new 2K restoration
Original Cantonese mono and DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio options
Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release
New audio commentary by film critic David West
Two Adventurers – new interview with Gary Bettinson, editor of Asian Cinema journal
Previously unseen archival interview with writer and producer Sandy Shaw
Theatrical trailer
PLUS: A Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring a new essay by Hong Kong cinema scholar Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park

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