DVD released: March 9th, 2004
Approximate running time: 93 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 4.3 full frame
Rating: R
Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo
DVD Release: Ardustry Home Entertainment
Region Coding: Region 1 NTSC
Retail Price: $9.98

Makoto (Sonny Chiba), is a cold blooded assassin who set up and sent to prison. Sybil (Brigitte Nielsen) helps Makoto break out of prison so that he can exact his revenge against those who set him up. Eddie Cook (Robert Davi) and Vinnie Rizzo (Steven Bauer) are part of a Special Crimes unit and they helped apprehend Makoto. When Makoto starts to kill agent after agent Cook and Rizzo with the help special agent Janet Hood, they get closer to the truth as they close in on Makoto.

The best thing about Body Count is Sonny Chiba his is sadistic as he takes out his targets and in true Chiba fashion he kicks a lot of as in the film. The rest of the cast is filled with some good performances highlighted by Robert Davi and Steven Bauer they make a great team. Director Talun Hsu fills Body Count with every action cliché in the book as his uninspired direction prevent this film from being anything more then average. It is no surprise that Talun Hsu only directed three films so far. Body Count has plenty of nudity and pushes the envelope were violence is concerned it is to bad they focused so much on these two things and not a stronger plot. In the end Body Count is nothing more then you’re straight to video action film.

The DVD:

Ardustry Home Entertainment DVD presents Body Count in a full frame transfer that doesn’t appear to be cropped as no info ever appears out of frame. The colors are solid and grain is noticeable through out the movie. The overall look of the transfer can be soft at times and there are some minor artifacts.

There is only one audio option on this DVD English dubbed track and the dialog is thin a times even though explosions and gun fire have a lot of punch.

This DVD is a barebones release and the only extras are trailer for six of Ardustry Home Entertainment’s other films. They didn’t even include a trailer for body count. This is probably the best version of Body Count we can ever expect and the overall audio/video is about average, still it gets the job done. Body Count offers nothing we haven’t seen in countless other action films and fans of Sonny Chiba will definitely want to check this out since Chiba has plenty of face time. Even though this DVD retails fairly cheap I recommend renting this DVD in only to see what Chiba does best kick ass.