Product Details

• Actors: Burt Kwouk, Chau Belle Dinh, Santi Sudaros, Charles Perriere, Williams Belle
• Directors: Julien Seri
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Lions Gate
• DVD Release Date: August 1, 2006
• Run Time: 95 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000FNNHTI
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #98,246 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

A Mortal Fighter. An Eternal Combat.A group of highly accomplished and fearless athletes whose breakneck skills include leaping from rooftops and scaling vertiginous facades goes to Bangkok to set up a gym and explore the cityscape.But once there they encounter a gang of Thai athletes who betraying their own heritage have pledged an allegiance to the Japanese Yakuza aiming to destroy the local triad and gain control of the city.System Requirements:Running Time: 93 MinutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: PG-13 UPC: 012236199472 Manufacturer No: 19949

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Parkour showcase, stylish, mindless and fun, June 18, 2007

By 

Jamie Kendall "zenjestre" (Tucson Arizona) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Great Challenge (DVD)

I decided early into this dvd that it wasn't a movie so much as it was the audition tape for an entire sport. One of the characters easily summarizes this early in the film by commenting on how excited he is to be promoting his sport, to "show people what they can do."

This movie does an exemplary job of showing people what these kids can do; and they can do some amazing things. Here is a series of really cool stunts, glued together with a hasty plot. Ignore the story- an old chinese man in ghost form guides our heroes on the path to being peaceful warriors, even the ones he isn't related to. What we're looking at here is the action, which more than makes up for our time.

I would recommend this movie to people interested in finding out more about parkour or people who like it enough to want to see some stylish examples of it. Since most of us tend to be action fans, there's plenty of fun fight choreography to watch as well.

As I've mentioned, this movie seemed, to me, to be an audition tape for parkour, or 'free-running', the art of movement. I hope it does well in that regard- parkour is a fascinating development of urban culture, and I'm excited to see what it can do, for stunts and filmmaking, for martial arts, for sports. People really can do some amazing things just with the bodies they were born with. I submit "The Great Challenge' to back up this declaration. Try it and see what I mean.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Stunts, November 13, 2010

By 

Matthew F. Tabor (Central / Upstate New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Great Challenge (DVD)

I saw a preview for this movie and thought it would be a martial arts movie, but it is more of a parkour movie with martial arts in it. If you're familiar with District B13, you probably have a good idea of what to expect from this movie. If you haven't seen B13, it is a movie featuring David Belle, the founder of parkour, an acrobatic running / climbing / jumping sport that was the inspiration for the gameplay in the popular Assassin's Creed video game series. Parkour co-founder Sébastien Foucan also makes an appearance as the fugitive in the chase scene at the beginning of Casino Royale of the James Bond franchise.

While I was somewhat disappointed in the fight scenes, I have to keep in mind that this isn't a martial arts movie. However, I do concede that other facets of the movie made up for this. The stunts and acrobatics were consistent with the precedent that B13 set and the cinematography was surprisingly creative and could be compared artistically to films like The City of Violence. If you're like me though and looking for an ACTUAL martial arts movie, but with an eclectic blend of parkour, gymnastics and breakdancing, I recommend Raging Phoenix.

The plot of this movie is pretty much irrelevant and exists mostly as an excuse to showcase the acrobatic abilities of the cast. However, the story is consistent, suffers no continuity errors and adequately ties the action scenes together. The only thing that I thought was weird is the fact that, although the cast speaks French throughout the entire movie, it takes place in two cities; London and Bangkok. Despite this, English and Thai are only spoken by anonymous characters in the background and the non-French comments are not included in the subtitles.

Audio options include French 2.0 Dolby Stereo (original) or English 5.1 Dolby Digital (dubbed) with optional English or Spanish subtitles. Another reviewer complained that there was no French audio and no special features on their copy, but both are present on mine, so presumably they received a bootleg.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars could be much better if the screenplay was better, September 13, 2006

By 

JustAReader "NoNeed2Comment" (Major Earthquake Faultline) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Great Challenge (DVD)

what we saw here is a trend that the cool 'district 13' french movie has set up. these urban explorers indeed are amazing, put all the olympic games to shame. but this movie's screenplay really sucks big time, wasted a bunch of cool young men's energy to nowhere. amazing stunts with deadbeat storyline. what a shame.