THE STOOL PIGEON Blu-ray Review

Dante Lam's The Stool Pigeon takes the grit and grime of Beast Stalker and uses it to scrub away at the world of the Hong Kong snitch.  The film pushes the Cat IIb rating to its limits with its depictions of hard ass bastards being brutal with one another over and over again. If you've been wondering what happened to the hard boiled crime thriller with a mean streak in Hong Kong, look no further. Performances by Nick Cheung as the understated cop going in for the kill, and Nicolas Tse as his proxy in the battle against the underworld are definitely highlights of The Stool Pigeon. Dante Lam's winning streak is intact, and Well Go USA again does right by the film with a solid A/V performance and Blu-ray/DVD combo release with serviceable bonus features.

THE STOOL PIGEON examines the fine line between cops and their undercover informants. Police Detective Don Lee (Nick Cheung) makes a bad call, causing a close informant to be injured. A year later, he must locate a new man to go undercover inside a jewel-theft ring. Ghost, Jr. (Nicholas Tse) doesn't want to do it, but Lee can offer deals and apply pressure that makes it hard to say no. Lee makes decisions based on the progress of his case, but not always at the benefit of his informant. Ghost must play a role, but can't decline the chance to do what's right. Best actor Nick Cheung, Nicholas Tse and Director Dante Lam renew the successful collaboration that brought audiences the multiple award-winner The Beast Stalker.

The Stool Pigeon isn't really a story we haven't seen before, but it is particularly well executed. In fact, the story is reminiscent of many recent revenge stories across Asia, primarily The Man From Nowhere, which shares a key device with this film.  However, rather than a man bent on revenge and taking it himself, he uses a proxy, in this case Nick Cheung uses Nicolas Tse to get the upper hand against the criminals.

Our reviewers, James Marsh and Charles Webb, took opposite sides in their views on the film.  James liked it with some reservations, but ended up saying:

THE STOOL PIGEON is a down and dirty thriller about lonely abandoned souls left to fester in the city's gutters. They are damaged, depressed and dangerous people pressured into high-stress situations that can all too easily end badly. The result is a film that's grubby, grimy and really rather good.

Charles was less impressed, and had this to offer:

There are a couple of well-staged and tense action sequences peppered throughout the film--in particular a car chase through the city streets which ends in a more realistic way than many film car chases do, then becomes a pretty interesting foot chase through a market that works in spite of not really answering how the characters are finally able to make their escape. Again, these scenes are part of a much more interesting movie that has a recognizable shape and would be easy to recommend were it not grafted onto the terrible other half which should be avoided like the plague.

I fall decidedly on James' side, in case you couldn't tell from my scribbles above.  The Stool Pigeon is a solid film that takes Lam's interest in the uglier side of HK crime and attacks it from an angle that we haven't seen in a while.  A solid recommendation from me.

The Disc:

Well Go USA decided to go the straight to DVD route with this one, presumably due to the lack of big names on the marquee.  While this may be a bummer to those in towns with screens that would show these films, it just means that we get to the home video release quicker.  This Blu-ray/DVD combo pack is solid, though not overwhelming.  The image quality is impressive, with a good amount of visual grain in the image lending itself well to the overall look of the film.  The details are sharp, and the colors are accurate to what I saw in the theatre, without being over-saturated.  The real winner on this release, though, is the rather bombastic audio track.  Well Go has provided a bass-heavy DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio track that will put your home theater to the test. I'm sure my neighbors weren't to happy with me, but I cranked this sumbitch up and it rocked!

In the way of extras, it seems that Well Go have ported over the features from the HK Blu-ray release.  Pretty standard stuff, very EPK-like, but there is around an hour and a half of behind-the-scenes footage and making of footage included.  It would be nice to have some original content, but for this price, I think this is still a good addition to any HK action collection!