The Movie: Of the most depressing films I've seen in my entire life, probably the entire top 5 come from China. And when I stuck The Road Home into my Netflix queue, I was expecting more along that line, and that's pretty much exactly what I got, although the main reason this DVD found its way too my home was because it stars Zhang Ziyi.

So what's it about? Well, it's a love story, framed by the story of a guy returning to his tiny home village, basically to bury his father who recently died. This brings up a huge flashback about the story of how his father and mother met, and how much his father meant to everyone in his community.

While the story seemed to drag a bit for me in the middle (pretty bad considering that this is only a 90 minute movie), the end returns in true Chinese tearjerker form. I wouldn't expect any less, especially from the director who brought us films like Raise The Red Lantern and To Live.

All in all, it was pretty good, but not really the best I've seen in the genre.

The DVD: The anamorphic transfer seemed free of any extraneous dust and dirt, but it did have a definite softness to the image, and while the colors were generally well saturated, the brights just weren't all that bright. Overall, just an average video transfer, but it did get the job done.

The audio, though technically mixed in 5.1 surround, was very straightforward with pretty much everything coming from the front soundstage, anchored to the center channel. But again, it got the job done.

As far as special features go, you get a theatrical trailer for this film, and other films from the director Zhang Yimou... well that and also a "Crouching Tiger" trailer. Add some very terse filmographies for Zhang Yimou and Zhang Ziyi, and that about does it for the entire lot of the special features. In other words, there isn't really anything, haha.