NO SPOILERS IN THIS POST

Just got done trolling around the message boards over at the SPL entry at IMDB and discovered people complaining that the ending wasn't as "stunning" as I'd claimed it to be.

Knowing the tendency of even the most ardent fans to occasionally give in to the temptation to buy an early bootleg or download an early bittorrent, I just couldn't keep quiet over there, and in fact SPOILED the movie for those poor suckers who picked up the currently-available DVD but later retracted the spoiler since it really is too good to give away.

I haven't seen this disc, but I have it on good authority - hell, you can put two and two together from just reading forums - that it's a theatre-screen steal of the MAINLAND CHINESE PRINT. Living in the country that is now responsible for as much as 40% of the world's pirated movies, you can't help but do the math.

As most of you here already know, mainland censorship, at least as it applies to theatrical presentations, dictates that the hero must usually (if not always) succeed in his mission and the villain must pay for his crimes through the expected government-sanctioned methods (at least the ones they PUBLICLY sanction ). For evidence of this, one need look no further than the "mainland ending" for Andrew Lau's INFERNAL AFFAIRS, in which a group of heretofore-unseen investigators suddenly pops up to arrest villain Andy Lau as he steps off the elevator after the film's final twist. In the Hong Kong print, seen on screens and DVDs everywhere else (and even on legit mainland DVDs I'm told), he gets off the elevator scott-free with little more than a slightly guilty conscience.

The current bootleg disc of SPL, according to posters at IMDB, has the final Donnie/Sammo showdown ending with Donnie Yen, having just finished fighting, placing a glass on the bar to pour himself a drink. The film then cuts to Simon Yam's final scene on the beach with the little girl.

This is NOT the ending of SPL.

This mainland aberration deletes probably a good three minutes of the movie between those two scenes. Those three minutes contain EVERYTHING that makes the ending of SPL so ironic, so dark, and so beautiful.

So as a word or warning to those here who really want to see this incredible movie, Don't bother with any current DVDs or download any current bittorents (at least as of the time of writing): there's a very good chance this hatchet job is what you'll see. SPL hasn't even been released on DVD yet as I write this (it's currently Nov. 22). I'm sure now that it's playing HK theatres, bootlegs of the proper version will soon be filtering out, but do you really want to take the risk and end up with the version the mainland Chinese government deemed acceptable for its people? Or watch a "passable" non-anamorphic video presentation shot off a theatre screen with one- or two-channel "5.1" audio (which is exactly what it will be, at least until bootleggers can actually rip off the real DVD)? I don't.

This film deserves better, and it will get it I'm sure in the new year. Trust me, it's worth waiting...

Actually, the UK is prime distributor of bootlegged goods. I don't know what the breakdown is but it's the biggest in Europe. People just like to point at the Chinese, but the Russians are also really big bootleggers, too.

I can't speak for the U.K. bootlegging scene, but it's absolutely insane over here in Canada. This article is from Toronto's popular Eye Weekly magazine and (somewhat humourously) covers the situation in Canada's larger cities quite well. This is probably the article where the comment about Canada's status as the number one source of bootlegged materials in the world emanated (in fact, I suspect my 40% number is an underrepresentation). The Chinese community is implicated as well, and rightly so, I'm afraid, since in Toronto, there's probably few people who DON'T know where to go for cheap flicks - any Chinese enclave will do. The "Spadina Ave." referred to in the piece as the hot-spot for Asian kids selling boots from tables (a recent development, actually) is the main street running through Toronto's massive downtown Chinatown.

http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_08.18.05/film/piracy.html

Obviously, bootleggers operate within almost every country in the world, including the U.K. and Russia, and come in all the ethnic colours of the rainbow, and their product certainly runs the gamut from horrid to undetectable-from-the-real-thing, but I wuold imagine Canada's slack copyright laws sadly make the country an ideal starting point for this material.

Nonetheless, I'm certain many folks will be scooping up their "new" SPL DVD's in Toronto today, without a clue as to what they're missing...

Thank for myself that I've just had a glimpse to this message and kept myself of knowing nothing at all before watching the movie!!! OK, if those people have bought those bootleg DVDs without that incredible scene, and complain about the movie is not as good as they expected, all I can say is SORRY.

But if paid attention to what Sammo said before the fight, people must know that the ending shouldn't be happened that way.

according to http://www.asiandvdguide.com/, the dvd will be out next month!

I have to agree. I just came back from a week in HK and was lucky to see SPL in a HK theater. The movie is great and the ending is poetic justice at its best.

I actually picked up a bootleg on Temple St. the night before I left to check the movie out at home before the real DVD comes out. I have not checked my version yet but...I am so glad I saw the whole movie the way it was meant to be seen.

According to the Sensasian newsletter, there's a NEW mainland release coming out which includes the original HK ending...