A note for those who have the import DVD. A number of changes were made to the subtitles. Some are minor; when Sky and Nameless fight, Nameless addresses the old blind musician as "Sir" instead of "Old man."
Two are big. First, the chant from Chinese soldiers that was translated as "Hail! Hail!" is now "Storm! Storm!" which is just plain weird. The other is Broken Sword's message. In the original film, he wrote "All under Heaven" in the dust. However, it's translated to "Our land" in this release.
The Video
Mr. Magoo is alive and well and supervising the transfers at Miramax. Seriously, this has to stop. Miramax is consistently producing the worst DVDs from a major studio, and this one is no exception. The video quality of this DVD is even lower than that of the import DVD, which is saying something.
The grain is hideous in places. There was a good amount in the import version but the Miramax release is worse. The film was overfiltered, like Miramax usually does (Cold Mountain, Kill Bill, The Station Agent) and overcompressed as well. This is probably due to the presence of a DTS soundtrack.
The end result is some nasty compression errors, like when dust is kicked up or during the fight between Snow and Moon (Zhang Ziyi) with all the leaves. On a big screen TV, you will notice these problems.
Color levels, at least, are decent. The deep reds of the early movie have a touch of chroma noise but it's minor. The blues and greens are rich, while the whites are surprisingly free of noise. Black levels are also good.
[Video] Score: 6 out of 10
