Blu-ray, DVD Release: Ocean Heaven

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Feb. 14, 2012
Price: DVD $24.98, Blu-ray/DVD Combo $29.98
Studio:
Well Go USA


Ocean Heaven movie scene

Jet Li takes on his first dramatic role in Ocean Heaven.

Martial arts superstar Jet Li (The Expendables) takes on his first dramatic role in the 2010 Chinese drama film Ocean Heaven.

Jet Li stars in the movie as Wang, a maintenance man at an ocean-styled water theme park who lives with his 20-year-old son David (Wen Zhang), who suffers from autism. Unable to function independently in the outside world, David is nonetheless a competent swimmer who regularly joins Wang at work, where he is allowed to play in the large aquariums with the dolphins, turtles and other tropical fish. However, when Wang discovers he has terminal cancer and only a matter of months left to live, he must help David assimilate into normal society or risk him being placed in a mental institution.

Ocean Heaven was written and directed by first time filmmaker Xue Xiaolu, who based the movie on her experiences over the past decade as a volunteer with Beijing Stars and Rain, a non-governmental educational organization for autistic children.

The foreign film was released to positive reviews in theaters across Asia in 2010 before being screened at a handful of North American festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival.

Presented in Mandarin with English subtitles, the DVD and Blu-ray include the following special features:

  • Jet Li interview about autism
  • deleted scenes
  • photo gallery
  • trailers

Here’s the trailer, the first one we’ve ever seen with Jet Li where he’s not kicking ass:

 

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.