Digi-Schlock: ACCIDENT (Shout! Factory Blu-Ray)

Despite its influence on Hollywood films and its popularity with cult movie fans, Asian genre cinema is still very much a niche market in American home video.  Thus, it is always good to see an independent video company willing to take a chance on such films.  Shout! Factory has dipped into this market recently with Accident and their release of this Johnnie To production is a handsome one.This disc offers a fairly vivid anamorphic transfer that does well by the film's 2.35:1 scope-format imagery.  Detail is strong, capturing the often shadowy style of lighting, and the disc handles the diverse palette of urban colors effectively.  The disc uses a 5.1 stereo track in the Cantonese language with non-optional English subtitles.  The film's big accident scenes use stereo trickery to impressive effect and the mix is a nice, subtly immersive one.  Subtitles are properly timed and always easy to read.A few brief extras are also thrown in.  The first is a subtitled trailer that sells the film's excitement while making it look like more of a conventional thriller than it actually is.  There is also a featurette that is actually a series of three brief EPK spots, all in the four minute range, strung together into one continuous program.  None of them go heavy into detail as they were obviously designed to be promotional puff-pieces but the middle segment is interesting because it offers a few comments on how the accidents were researched and some on-set footage of the film's first setpiece.All in all, this is a solid disc for the Asian genre film fanbase, offering a strong transfer of the film in its original language and making a basic but welcome stab at extras.  If you like to support domestic releases of Hong Kong fare, you'll want to seek it out.To read Schlockmania's film review for Accident, click here.