Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

A Prayer for the Dying Blu-ray Movie Review

"There's no reason for killing or dying anymore. What's more, there's no reason for living!"

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown January 14, 2025

Director Mike Hodges' A Prayer for the Dying first arrived on Blu-ray courtesy of Twilight Time in 2016 with a now out-of-print Limited Edition release of 3,000. Sandpiper Pictures is re-releasing the film in a BD featuring strong audio and video, albeit sans any significant supplemental material. The film tells the story of a man in deadly IRA-beset Ireland fighting to pay penance for a heinous act and stars Mickey Rourke, Bob Hoskins, Liam Neeson, Alan Bates, Sammi Davis, Christopher Fulford, Leonard Termo, Camille Coduri, Maurice O'Connell, Alison Doody, Karl Johnson, Anthony Head and Ian Bartholomew.

"Listen, I don't want to keep waking up every night hearing the screams of young children. I lost something a long time ago, Malachy. Everything. Everything got very black, like dried blood. And something started to stink. Every day it got worse, sometimes so bad I couldn't get out of my bed. I sat there In the dark like a wee scared boy, not being able to breathe or speak my name. I saw myself lying in the street, dying, not wanting to die. Maybe there's something wrong with me."

A Prayer for the Dying begins with a shocking moment where a planned IRA bombing goes horribly awry. The scene is disturbing, but IRA member Martin Fallon (Mickey Rourke) simply stares in almost quasi-lobotomized fashion at the carnage without much of a reaction. But soon Fallon begins to make attempts to escape his IRA past, something that he finds increasingly difficult to achieve. After the catastrophe depicted in the film's opening moments, Fallon hightails it to London where he seems to be wanting to just kind of blend in to the woodwork. While the "backstage" machinations aren't detailed, he's ultimately seen in a secret meeting with a former cohort who pitches an idea to Fallon which will grant him loads of cash and a passport that will enable him to escape to the United States and more or less disappear. The idea of course includes the killing of a supposedly nefarious gangster, but Fallon knows that the hit is the brainchild of another bad guy, a nasty sort named Jack Meehan (Alan Bates).

Click here to read the rest of Jeffrey Kauffman's analysis of A Prayer for the Dying, which he calls "a twisting path of guilt, conscience, subterfuge and, ultimately, (maybe) absolution." He adds, though, "the film never quite achieves the gravitas it seems to be aiming for, and both director Mike Hodges and star Mickey Rourke have distanced themselves from the final product, saying it isn't the film they had envisioned."

A Prayer for the Dying Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Either Sandpiper has supplied a different 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer of the film from the MGM vaults (unlikely) or I had a better subjective reaction to the same transfer my colleague reviewed in 2016 (more likely). His primary concern was the image's grain field, which admittedly is a bit wonky at times. It appears to be slightly filtered, yes, but also sometimes has notably yellow flecks of grain scattered throughout the entire picture. In motion, it didn't bother me at all, though it is more apparent in select screen captures. Otherwise, A Prayer for the Dying fares quite well, with warm, lifelike colors, some punchy primaries, and deep, nicely contrasted black levels. Skin tones are natural too, and despite the abundance of mahogany hues in the film's church settings, there's an earthiness to the presentation that suits the flavor of the film. Detail borders on terrific, with crisp, clean edge definition and precisely resolved fine textures, and there's very little in the way of softness from scene to scene. Banding, blocking and other encoding issues are kept to the barest of minimums too (read: I didn't notice any) and despite the limitations of a BD-25 disc and Sandpiper's smaller file sizes, the film struck me as unaffected.

A Prayer for the Dying Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sandpiper's release of A Prayer for the Dying offers the same DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless track as its Twilight Time predecessor, of which my colleague writes it's "a fine sounding [mix] that capably supports some long dialogue moments while also providing occasional punch courtesy of more action-adventure elements like explosions and gunfire. Fidelity is fine, with no damage of any kind to report."

A Prayer for the Dying Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The 2016 release featured an isolated score track and two featurettes with interviews with the director and cinematographer. The Sandpiper Pictures releases only includes the film's theatrical trailer.

A Prayer for the Dying Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Father Michael: Have you something to say?
Martin: We are fundamentally alone. Nothing lasts. There's no purpose to any of it.
Father Michael: That's a bit of a statement. Can you explain it to God?
Martin: No, Father. Wrong way around. Can he explain it to me? Can he explain my lost faith and how I lost it?

A Prayer for the Dying longs to be a poignant, meaningful exploration of the human soul, and there are moments that it comes oh so close. Unfortunately, the screenplay almost feels incomplete -- alternatively perhaps it's that the film seems to have lost key bits in the edit -- and everything from reactions to motivations to direct actions sometimes fail to align with what we see on screen (or are missing altogether). Sandpiper's Blu-ray release is at least very good, with strong video and audio. Alas, extras are missing as this is another near-barebones edition from Sandpiper that didn't bring along previously available extras.