Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Birdy Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 4, 2019

The physical scars of war, deeply rooted mental trauma, and the unbreakable bonds of friendship are at the heart of Birdy, Director Alan Parker's (Mississippi Burning, Evita) unusual story of post-traumatic stress disorder in the Vietnam era. The film follows two friends, both changed from their experiences in war, one physically wounded, the other emotionally wrecked. The film plays across two timelines, following the friends both as they live in pre-war Philadelphia and after war as they struggle to come to terms with what the war has done to them. It's a tonally odd, but surprisingly effective, film that balances a curious friendship defined by typical, and atypical, teenage struggles against darker overtones of inner and outer pain, all centered around a peculiar obsession with birds and flight.

Al Columbato (Nicolas Cage) and his off-kilter best friend who goes by “Birdy” (Matthew Modine) spend their days playing baseball and fixing up old cars, the sort of things many young men did to fill their time back in the early 1960s. Birdy also raises pigeons in a coop of his design and making. He’s obsessed with birds and flight and dreams of experiencing the freedom of flying. Like many young men of their time, they are drafted to Vietnam. Both return alive, but Al has suffered extensive physical injuries to his face and Birdy, the lone survivor of a helicopter crash, is not physically scarred but he is emotionally unstable, refusing to speak or eat and placed under the car of Major Weiss (John Harkins) and Nurse Hannah (Karen Young) in a psychiatric ward. Al is allowed to remain at the hospital in hopes of reaching his friend in a way Birdy’s doctors cannot. As the film explores their shared lives and experiences in war, time ticks away and the opportunity for Al to find his friend under deep inward pain lessens with every passing day.

The film is slow to explore its world and characters but gradually evolves into a hard-working and effectively harrowing and heartfelt experience of deeply rooted physical and emotional pains. Parker, who directs the film from a script based on the novel of the same name written by William Wharton and published in 1978, tackles the then-timely and today still relevant subject of post-traumatic stress disorder with a surprisingly agreeable and greatly effective tonal imbalance that celebrates joyous life against painful trauma, grounded in Birdy’s awkward celebration of avian life and flight. The story grows increasingly difficult as Al’s efforts to free Birdy from an inwardly captive mental state continue to fail, as does his own mental state at the realization that his physical scars are never likely to fully heal, leaving him a changed man, too. He finds purpose in working with Birdy, even as he’s forced to wrestle with the hospital bureaucracy and the reality of his own life after war. It’s an effective duality that explores two different kinds of scarring from two different perspectives grounded in shared history and experiences.

Parker crafts the story with visual finesse, finding several compelling means of capturing the inner isolation that shapes Birdy's post-war existence and the outer frustration Al experiences as he attempts to free his friend from the shackles of his severe PTSD. But Parker otherwise leaves it to his actors to shape the story, which they do in compelling ways. Both are limited in some way. Modine spends much of the movie curled and twisted in a protective, sometimes almost fetal, position. The actor is given more freedom to explore his true emotional state in the pre-war flashbacks, which he accomplishes effectively, but it's his work in the hospital, in silence, physically and emotionally drawn into himself and away from the world that sees the performance, and the movie, at their most effective. Cage, meanwhile, acts underneath heavy bandages that cover much of his face. Expressiveness of the face and eyes are limited, and Cage is forced to carry the part with a soulful depth and verbal stamina that both shape his place as a man struggling with a new emotional reality and physical identity and a wounded emotional state that is under attack by both the realization of his new life and his friend's increasingly hopeless state of silence and detachment.

Birdy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Birdy soars onto Blu-ray with another terrific pressed MOD (Manufactured on Demand) release from Sony. The image is firmly filmic, holding true to a natural, pleasing grain structure that is consistent in density and complimentary to the film's texture-rich environments, objects, and characters. Some of the run-down textures around Philadelphia look amazing. The sandlot where the kids play ball, chipping paint, weathered woods...the look and tactile feel of heavily lived-in, overgrown, and well-used environments across the city is stellar. The brick walls and tile floors in the asylum show all of the grimy wear and reveal it's been a long time since the room had the deep clean it desperately needs; viewers will appreciate the complimentary feel of run-down isolation and uncertainty the spartan environment lends to the picture's dramatic footprint. Facial textures are highly revealing and intimately sharp, as are the dense white bandages Al wears through most of the film. The image overall is very texturally adept and handsome, and only a few brief, barely noticeable speckles and splotches interfere. Colors are well rounded, finding good, true contrast and colorful details around Philadelphia, the grimy off-white colors in the asylum with equal richness, and bright green foliage, orange fireballs, and red blood in a couple of Vietnam scenes. Skin tones are healthy and black levels are appropriately deep. Flaws are few. There's a wobbly shot at the 1:03:40 mark when the image appears to fluctuate between crisp and soft, but there's really nothing else of note. Fans couldn't have realistically asked for a significantly better presentation.

Birdy Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The two-channel DTS-HD Master Audio lossless soundtrack never really takes flight. It's rather limited in its opportunities to engage, in its range, and in its clarity. Music at the 16:45 mark lacks clarity and severely wants for a more impressive low end depth and stage immersion, the same of which can be said for similarly heavy notes or lighter score alike for the duration. The track picks up crude, but effectively wide, ambience at a junk yard in chapter four and at a carnival in the same chapter. A couple of explosions and a helicopter crash during brief Vietnam flashbacks late in the movie fail to offer much depth or detail, coming across as muddled and severely lacking stage-filling detail and the low end punch they desperately demand. Dialogue is clear and well detailed, for the most part, and images well to the center.

Birdy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Sony's Blu-ray release of Birdy contains only the film's Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 2:44). No DVD or digital copies are included. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

Birdy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Birdy is a peculiar, but powerful, film of friendship, pain, and obsession. The movie requires its audience to be patient as Parker slowly digs into the characters' mindsets and realities in both their pre-and post-war lives. It evolves form a curiosity to a compelling film that finds an agreeable tonal balance between light friendship beats, deep-seeded traumas, and oddball obsessions. It's very well acted and comes to a humorously strange, but effective, conclusion. Sony's pressed MOD Blu-ray is unfortunately absent any extras of substance. It does include high quality 1080p video and a serviceable, but limited, two-channel lossless soundtrack. Recommended.