Little Big Soldier takes place in a time before China was unified and warring states were constantly attacking each other in order to gain new territories. This film focuses primarily on the two states Liang and Wei, and more specifically, on a common Liang foot soldier, "Little Soldier," Chan, and a Wei "Big General," Leehom Wang.
The film opens in the aftermath of a major battle between the two states with no one left alive. Well, almost no one. It seems Chan's character has been playing dead, and as a result, is the only Liang soldier left standing. When he stumbles across Wang's character, and realizes that the bruised and battered enemy General is still alive, he ties him up and starts a long trek back to Liang Mountain in order to turn the enemy leader in for a big reward, an honorable discharge from the military, and five acres of land to farm.
This walk back to Little Soldier's home is the focus of the film. Along the way, the two characters constantly fight as Wang attempts to break free any chance he gets, while Chan's character's determination at getting the high-ranking man back home for his reward causes him to often get the better of the well-trained enemy soldier. The pair will face quite a few adversaries as well and will have to learn to work together if either one is to survive.
What Chan's character doesn't realize is that, for some reason, the General is being pursued by men from his own state. To be more specific, the kingdom's Prince Wen (Steve Yoo) and his honor guard. It isn't really clear early on why the Prince is after the General, but we do learn that the two know each other, and for some reason, the Prince is determined to kill the captured Wei soldier.
Little Big Soldier definitely benefits from the high definition nature of Blu-ray as the film crew found many stunning sights to take in. Everything from the rough and dirty war grounds in the film's early scenes to a cave the unnamed characters fall into at Liang Mountain itself all look great in HD. If you are going to watch this film, this is definitely the way to do it.
Audio was also good. There is a song that is sung by a couple of the characters several times in the film, and it always sounds loud and clear. The song is in Chinese though, even if you have the English dubbed option turned on, but that's okay since it probably would have lost something if the words were dubbed over. As it is, the subtitles for the song are enough to convey its meaning. Speaking of audio options, the Blu-ray release offers both the original Mandarin sound track as well as English dubbing and subtitles. The dubbing is pretty well done, especially since both Chan and Wang lend their voices for the English tracks. As for the other characters though, I'm not sure if the same actors were used for both languages.
As for special features, Little Big Soldier has a few good tidbits. I enjoyed the Making-Of featurette that covered many different aspects of the film, as well as the video that shows Chan singing the aforementioned song. The other special features include both the international and original trailers for the film.
I do have to say though, while I don't normally mention menus in reviews, this one is worth talking about ... primarily because of how badly it was done. The words for each menu selection are done in an elaborate script that would make it a challenge to read to begin with, but when placed in front of a yellow scroll, the options became nearly impossible to discern. The color-change when highlighting an option didn't help much since it just changed the text to a red that made it harder to figure out. This was just poorly executed.
That being said, the movie is well worth seeing. As for the value of buying the film versus renting it, that is based primarily on your affinity towards Chan's comedic-action movies, or your interest in pre-unified China. I know I will be watching the movie again as I have a few friends that I know will want to see it.
