THE TREASURE HUNTER Blu-ray Review

If you're looking for a popcorn film to pass the time, you could do worse than The Treasure Hunter.  Jay Chou (The Green Hornet) plays an expert of ancient Chinese relics with a few tricks up his sleeve.  Throw in some desert action, some magic, a bit of martial arts, and a lot of CGI and you've got a film that is pretty easy to like.  The Treasure Hunter is a bit slight in the story department and does meander a bit in the middle, but the action is fun to watch, and the film is mostly pretty peppy. FUNimation have given The Treasure Hunter a decent Blu-ray presentation, if you're looking for action, you'll find it here.

Fans of The Mummy need hunt no further for edge-of-your-seat thrills! Hong Kong Film Award winners, Jay Chou (The Green Hornet) and Eric Tsang, star in this blazing adventure packed with action and stunning special effects.

Qiaofei (Jay Chou) is a relic expert with a gritty past. When his mentor's daughter is held hostage over a map with a deadly history, the rugged warrior whips into action! Chaos erupts as he swoops in to the rescue and scours the sands for legendary riches buried deep in China's northwest desert. Chased down by the shadowy Sandstorm Legion and challenged by countless greedy, bloodthirsty foes, Qiaofei faces danger at every turn to find the tomb--but some treasures aren't meant to be found.

The comparison to The Mummy is more than apt.  There are numerous plot and setting parallels to Stephen Sommers' film series, and the quality is just as all over the board as those films. It is difficult to write up a film like this. While I enjoyed it, and I can see the qualities that make it enjoyable, on a critical level The Treasure Hunter is very uneven, and can't seem to focus on action like it should.

The film opens with some exposition about an ancient legend, as fantasy stories do, and some pretty cool looking CG desert action.  The problem is that they can't quite keep up that pace, and there are decent stretched in the film that are far too languid for a story like this.  Once the action cranks back up, it is a lot of fun, but there are a couple too many dead stretches in the film.  The 105 minute running time could have been trimmed back about 20 minutes and we'd have been left with a great little action flick, but those extra minutes really don't belong.

The action in the film is split pretty evenly between CG sequences and wire-fu sequences with a little bit of overlap.  Normally I'd be the first to decry the lack of serious hand to hand combat in the film, but with a movie like The Treasure Hunter it is not so troublesome.  The audience is asked to suspend disbelief right from the opening frames, so a some fantastical fighting isn't much of a stretch in terms of the film's internal logic.

The Treasure Hunter isn't really about acting, but it does a pretty decent job of showcasing what action chops Jay Chou has.  He pulls off his fight sequences adequately, though I'm sure there is a lot of double work.  Most of the rest of the film is spent brooding, but hey, isn't that what loner action heroes do?  The film isn't going to win any awards, but it will keep you entertained, and that's gotta be worth something. I liked The Treasure Hunter in spite of my better instincts, and I'm okay with that.

The Disc:

One thing I've gotta say for FUNimation, while their catalog doesn't always knock me out, their Blu-ray transfers always do.  The Treasure Hunter looks fantastic on Blu-ray.  The colors and clarity on this disc are outstanding, and the image is top notch.  The sound is a bit of a miss, though, as FUNimation have chosen to include only a Mandarin and English language track in Dolby TrueHD 2.0.  Why this is, I'm not sure, but with all of the zipping around going on onscreen, a surround track would have been welcome.

By way of extra content, the only inclusion on this disc is FUNimation's English language trailer and several trailers for other FUNi releases. A bit sparse.

Overall, if you want to pass the time, you could do worse than The Treasure Hunter on Blu-ray.  The image is top notch and it is a really fun film, but the Blu is lacking in a couple of departments.