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Miracles: The Canton Godfather - Deluxe Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (30th March 2025). |
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The Film
 Kwok Chun-Wah (Dragon Fist's Jackie Chan) arrives in Hong Kong from the mainland in search of work and immediately gets scammed – by Supercop's Bill Tung in a guest appearance – but nevertheless spends his last pennies on a good luck rose from street vendor Mrs. Ko (The Wedding Banquet's Gua Ah-Lei) seconds before he winds up literally in the path of a gang war between Boss Bak (Sunny Fang Kang) and Dun Yat-fu (Island of Fire's Ko Chun-Hsiung) who insists that Bak's late partner Tang-Yeung owes a share of Bak's businesses. When chronically-ill Bak dies, a misunderstanding leads to Kwok being named as his successor to the advantage of advisor Uncle Hoi (Kickboxer's Wu Ma) and the ire of expectant successor Brother Fei (Five Fingers of Death's Lo Lieh). Kwok continues his good luck ritual of purchasing a rose daily and also endeavors to take the gang in a more honest direction, converting the sham restaurant money-laundering front The Ritz into a nightclub headlined by Tang-Yueng's daughter Lo-Ming (Rouge's Anita Mui) who is eager to work off her father's debt. When Dun tries to muscle in on half ownership of The Ritz, Kwok proves a formidable fighter, but Brother Fei starts stirring up trouble between them behind the scenes where also lurks Inspector Ho (Millionaires' Express' Richard Ng) who wants to put both gangs behind bars. When Kwok is unable to find Mrs. Ko one morning, he sends his gang out in search of her only to discover that she is bed-bound with depression after learning that her daughter Belle (Saviour of the Soul's Gloria Yip) has become engaged to a wealthy man's son Koo Tung-Yuen (Ngai Jan) while away at school in Shanghai. Mrs. Kao has let her daughter believe she is a wealthy member of Hong Kong high society while paying for her needs with her roses. She is now afraid that her daughter will be ashamed of her and her fiance's father (A Better Tomorrow's Tien Feng) will not allow the union if the truth of her circumstances are exposed when they announce their plans to visit Hong Kong. As Kwok and Lo-Ming attempt to keep Belle, her fiance, and his father in the dark through elaborate subterfuge with the help of his beleaguered gang, an all-out gang war may just crash the party. An uncredited remake of Frank Capra's A Pocketful of Miracles, Miracles – better-known until the DVD era as "Mr. Canton and Lady Rose" (the subtitle beneath the Cantonese title card) more so than its actual anonymous-sounding export title "Black Dragon" – is nowhere near the scope and scale of Chan's Project A: Part 2 or even the more modest Police Story films but nevertheless is another example of Chan growing his film image beyond martial arts revenge stories to works of entertainment aimed at a broader Hong Kong audiences. Although it does include a handful of action set-pieces, the emphasis really is on comedy, melodrama, shot through with tons of celebrity cameos – along with Chan's stunt team playing multiple roles – and the exploitation of lush production values in gorgeous sets and photography until the climax in an exhilarating rope factory showdown. As with Rumble in the Bronx, the late Mui is not only eye candy but subject to a somewhat milder version of the rough treatment of Chan romantic interests but also gets a musical number while ? is also quite affecting as the "Rose Lady". Jackie Chan fans who might have felt that Dragons Forever was cloyingly sentimental may find he managed to strike a better balance between comedy, drama, and action here but perhaps never managed it again whenever his directorial efforts took on a more romantic bent like Gorgeous. 
Video
Miracles was hard to see in English-friendly form in the West for some time – the Hong Kong laserdisc was apparently not made from a print with burnt-in dual-language subtitles – until the DVD era with English subtitles available on the Hong Kong Megastar disc – imported stateside by Tai Seng – and the mainland China release (which only had the Mandarin dub) followed by an anamorphic Hong Kong reissue from Universe Laser and Video and finally a Joy Sales remaster with DTS audio and a selection of deleted scenes from the Taiwanese version. Columbia Tri-Star's first go at the title was an okay two-sided DVD as "Miracles" featuring anamorphic widescreen and fullscreen versions with Cantonese and Mandarin tracks – along with an isolated score option – while their subsequent "Black Dragon" reissue replaced the fullscreen option with a poor transfer of the export version cropped to fullscreen. The U.K. got a better package from Hong Kong Legends. The film was again a lesser priority in the Blu-ray age with a Hong Kong Blu-ray featuring English subtitles but an upscaled SD master and more recently a Scandinavian release that only featured the English dub. 88 Films first put the film out on Blu-ray in 2019 featuring both cuts from a 4K restoration. Their 2025 "deluxe limited edition" Dolby Vision 2160p24 HEVC 2.35:1 widescreen/1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray combo comes from a new 4K restoration according to the disc specs with both discs including the Hong Kong version (127:41) and the English export version (106:33) reconstructed using the original camera negative. We have not seen the previous Blu-ray but the 4K Dolby Vision and SDR 1080p presentations are a breath of fresh air next to the DVD. Wardrobe and set colors do not just pop, they gleam, and actors retain their "glamour" treatment make-up and lighting through the smoke and fog (the 4K HDR version better delineates the actor's pallor from the warm gel lighting in some moodier shots). More so than the aforementioned period piece Project A: Part 2, Miracles remastered looks like a prestige production. 
Audio
As usual for boutique labels taking on Hong Kong cinema, 88 Films is pretty comprehensive in its inclusion of the various audio tracks associated with the production throughout its shelf life. For the Hong Kong version, we get three (!) Cantonese DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono tracks: theatrical, alternate, and home video, each with small differences sometimes in music cues, effects, or even mixing levels of the music. The classic export English dub in DTS-HD Master Audio 2..0 mono has also been fitted to the longer cut. The Cantonese and English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks, on the other hand, are included but to be avoided. Presumably the same remixes done for the DVD era, both surround tracks treat Mui's musical number as diegetic when it is actually being employed as score, so the volume lowers in wide shots of the club and during the montage and raises whenever it cuts back to her on the stage (the mono tracks keep the music at a consistent volume throughout the entire sequence). The same is true of the scoring of some of the fight scenes as if it is music in the scenes rather than over them. English subtitles are included for the Cantonese tracks and English SDH for the English dubs. The English export version includes the classic dub in English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono along with English SDH subtitles. 
Extras
New to this edition is an audio commentary by the New York Asian Film Festival's Frank Djeng and filmmaker F.J. DeSanto in which DeSanto describes the film as Chan's "best-directed movie" and Djeng notes that Chan himself includes it among his favorite works in his untranslated autobiography. The discuss the Capra film, itself a remake of his earlier Lady for a Day, and that the film was suggested as a remake by writing collaboratorEdward Tang (The Young Master) – combined with Chan's own love of Hollywood musicals and his desire to do something to showcase his skills as a director rather than a martial arts choreographer after the successful Police Story 2. They also note that not only did Chan utilize locations less familiar than those of his other films of the period – using Shaw's sound stages since Golden Harvest could not accommodate some of the larger sets along with shooting in Macao where there was more preservation of historical architecture compared to Hong Kong where Djeng notes the camera crew had to frame exteriors carefully to maintain the period, but that the film itself features a sense of whimsy and earnestness unlike Chan's other films including the more sentimental ones along with the uniqueness of a romantic pairing between Chan and Mui compared to their other collaborations. Throughout the running time, they also point out all of the celebrity cameos including Chan's and Sammo Hung's little brother Yuen Biao and the dinner party finale which is the type of situation ideally suited to such special appearances.  The bulk of the video extras are included on the Blu-ray part of the package only. Ported over from the 2019 edition is "Jackie Chan: Film Director" (10:32), a video essay by film historian Steve Lawson along with the Hong Kong teaser trailer(4:18) and Hong Kong theatrical trailer (4:19), the latter also included on the 4K disc but not in 4K or HDR. Also new to this edition are excerpts from the Taiwanese version (10:37) which Djeng revealed in the commentary was simply longer with scene extensions rather than any exclusive scenes, along with the English export trailer (2:20), Japanese theatrical trailer (1:32), Japanese TV spot (0:18), and an image gallery. 
Packaging
The deluxe limited edition comes with a reversible sleeve featuring original Hong Kong art and is packaged in a rigid slipcase with artwork by Sam Green, a perfectbound book with essays by David West, Paul Gramhall, and William Blaik – not supplied for review so we do not know if it has been expanded over the booklet included with the first 3,000 copies of the 2019 edition – limited art cards, and a double-sided foldout poster.
Overall
With Miracles, Jackie Chan strikes the right balances between action, comedy, and sentimentality.
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