Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.85:1 on this 4K UHD Disc. Despite the movie’s inherent “80s-ness”, this Dolby Vision presentation looked very good.
Sharpness seemed mostly strong. A few slightly soft shots appeared, but most of the flick looked pretty tight.
Jagged edges and moiré effects created no concerns, and I saw no edge haloes. With a good layer of grain, noise reduction didn’t become an issue, and print flaws remained absent.
The movie featured a palette that accentuated bold colors, and the disc replicated those hues with pretty good fidelity. The tones came across as fairly bright and vivid, and HDR added range to the colors.
Black levels also seemed deep and dense, while shadow detail usually appeared appropriately opaque. HDR gave whites and contrast extra punch. This looked like a solid transfer overall.
Downconverted to Dolby TrueHD 7.1, I also found a pleasant surprise when I listened to the Dolby Atmos soundtrack of Last Dragon. While the soundfield didn’t provide a slam-bang experience, it opened up the spectrum pretty nicely.
The forward domain showed good stereo imaging for the music, and it also spread ambient effects well. The material created a decent sense of atmosphere, and elements moved cleanly across the domain.
The rear speakers added a fine general sense of setting and popped to life during occasional action scenes. Overall the soundfield worked well.
Audio quality also seemed pretty impressive for the most part, and dialogue generally sounded natural and warm. I noticed a few examples of a little edginess, but those occasions occurred infrequently, and I discerned no issues related to intelligibility.
Effects appeared clean and accurate. They came across as well defined and showed no issues related to distortion.
The music seemed largely bright and lively, and the mix of score and songs also demonstrated nice dynamics considering the age of the material. This was a more than solid track for a flick from 1985.
How did the 4K UHD compare to the 2015 Blu-ray? The Atmos mix opened up the prior 5.1 a bit, but the limitations of the source meant the two felt pretty similar.
As for the Dolby Vision image, the 4K showed improvements in colors, delineation and blacks – to a degree. The dated nature of the source limited improvement, as the movie’s “80-ness” held it back. Still, the 4K felt a bit more impressive than the still-solid Blu-ray.
Only one extra shows up on the 4K disc: a circa 2023 fan commentary with comedian Amber Ruffin and author Lacey Lamar. Both sisters sit together for this running, screen-specific appreciation of the film.
This means they laugh a lot, quote lines and tell us how much they love the movie. Oh, they make fun of some of the flick’s more dated and/or sillier elements, but mostly they just enjoy themselves.
Which means we don’t get anything especially valuable here. Ruffin and Lamar don’t appear to know about the production, and they fail to give us many thoughts about why the movie means so much to them.
Granted, one expects a lot of praise in fan commentaries, but they usually come from fans who live/breathe the movies to a degree where they can offer insights. We don’t get those here, so this becomes a bubbly track but not one that offers useful material.
On the included Blu-ray copy, we find an audio commentary from director Michael Schultz. He provides a running, screen-specific look at how he came to the project, budget issues and rewrites, cast and performances, sets and locations, stunts and action, music, and related topics.
For the movie’s first act or so, Schultz delivers a pretty good look at movie subjects. However, he loses steam as he goes.
That makes this a spotty track, and one with some weird goofs. Schultz gets Vanity’s Prince-related career path wrong and also thinks George Lucas took inspiration from Chinese martial arts movies, not Kurosawa flicks. Schultz delivers a decent take on his own film but this still turns into an up and down discussion.
In addition to the film’s trailer, a featurette called Return of the Dragon runs 24 minutes, eight seconds. It provides info from Schultz, executive producer Berry Gordy, screenwriter Louis Venosta, soundtrack producer Kerry Gordy, Urban Action Showcase founder Demetrius Angelo, and actors Taimak, Henry Yuk, Lisa Dalton and Michael Chin.
“Return” covers the movie’s origins and development, cast and performances, story/characters, music, sets and locations, action scenes, and the film’s release/legacy. We get some basics but the program comes with too much happy talk to give us anything especially informative.
Campy, disjointed and nearly devoid of entertainment value, Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon flops. Nothing about it connects, so it turns into a messy and cheesy affair. The 4K UHD comes with positive picture and audio as well as a few bonus materials. Fans will like this solid 4K, but I can’t find anything about the movie to enjoy.
To rate this film visit the Blu-Ray review of THE LAST DRAGON