Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Congo Blu-ray Movie Review

Me, Amy; You, Ugly Gorillas

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 15, 2014

Congo is often remembered as the killer gorilla movie, but in fact the mutant gray monsters don't appear until late in the film. Adapted from Michael Crichton's novel of the same name, Congo is more accurately described as a modern version of an old Hollywood staple, the jungle adventure, with a Crichton-style wrapping of technology and a classic MacGuffin about a legendary treasure. What made the film popular with audiences in 1995, and continues to make it entertaining today, is the sly wit that screenwriter and playwright John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck and Doubt) sprinkled liberally throughout the script in adapting Crichton's novel. Gratuitous but entertaining moments like the "California Dreaming" sequence (those familiar with Congo will know what I mean) or inspired decisions like changing the expedition leader from a Scot to an African of British descent ("I'm your Great White Hunter. Though I happen to be black.") are classic Shanley touches. Add unexpected casting choices from the experienced team of director Frank Marshall and producer Kathleen Kennedy, both long-time collaborators with Steven Spielberg, and Congo offers plenty of entertainment for well over an hour before the deadly apes enter the scene

Congo deftly assembles an unlikely expedition to Mt. Mukenko, a simmering volcano in a remote African region, from a mismatched group with three competing agendas, two of them hidden. The ostensible purpose of the trip, and the one that serves as a cover story, is to return a captive gorilla named Amy to the wild. (Amy is played by several actresses in a suit and voiced by actress Shayna Fox.) A scientific prodigy, Amy has spent years at Berkeley learning sign language from Dr. Peter Eliot (Dylan Walsh) and his assistant, Richard (Grant Heslov), and speaking through an electronic interface that translates signs into speech. Lately, however, Amy has been agitated by nightmares and has been compulsively painting images that resemble the jungle. Dr. Eliot has become convinced that she needs to return to her home environment.

When the university rejects Eliot's request to fund a voyage that will deprive it of one of its most lucrative fundraising attractions, an angel investor appears in the person of Rumanian "philanthropist" Herkermer Homolka (Tim Curry, adopting a suitably ripe accent). In fact, Homolka's interests are far from charitable. He is looking for a legendary treasure that he believes Amy has seen, having spotted clues in her paintings. He also turns out to be broke.

The member of the expedition with genuine funding is Dr. Karen Ross (Laura Linney), who works for the telecommunications giant TraviCom, owned by magnate R.J. Travis (Joe Don Baker). Travis' son, Charlie (Bruce Campbell), led a previous expedition to the region in search of a flawless blue diamond that would be the key to TraviCom's next-generation laser, but the entire expedition disappeared after an interrupted satellite transmission that is the film's opening scene. Karen, who was once engaged to Charlie, has gone to find him, although she suspects that his father cares more about the blue diamond than his son.

It is through Karen's TraviCom connections that the expedition acquires its leader, Munro Kelly, who is played by Ghostbusters' Ernie Hudson with a wry detachment that gives almost every line a comical twist. Kelly not only knows the territory, but he's also a good judge of people, and he sizes up each member of his motley crew in an instant. Congo is a fine demonstration of the maxim that the journey is more important than the destination, because most of the film is occupied with finding Amy's home, Homolka's treasure and Karen's former fiancé, all of which turn out to be roughly in the same place. But to get there, the bickering team has to navigate territories inflamed by local disputes, battling militias, hostile air space, treacherous terrain, perilous waters, the strange customs of local tribes and their own internal conflicts.

It's a tribute both to the cast and to Marshall's direction that all of these adventures are both entertaining and feel like a part of an inevitable buildup to the discovery that occupies the film's final act. Marshall has been a producer or executive producer on every Indiana Jones film, and his experience with such episodic adventure stories is evident. The film also benefits from memorable uncredited appearances by Joe Pantoliano as Eddie Ventro, the "fixer" who supplies Karen with her equipment in Africa (and also hires Munro) and by Delroy Lindo as Captain Wanta, a cheerfully corrupt official who is both well-informed and a first-rate negotiator.

One of the chief objections to Congo when it was released was that its apes were either actors in suits or animatronic creations by effects wizard Stan Winston. Two years after Jurassic Park, computer graphics hadn't yet progressed to the point where furred creatures could be rendered realistically. Today, all of Congo's creatures could be believably created in the digital domain, but they might not have the same weight and specificity of interaction with the human cast. Besides, the real enemy in Congo isn't the killer apes. It's the people who created them and those who provoked them, in both cases for the same reason: human greed.

Congo Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Congo was shot by the fine cinematographer Allen Daviau (E.T., Empire of the Sun ), who has a distinctive gift for arranging his frame and choosing focal lengths that give his images a sense of depth. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, from a Paramount transfer, while not at the very top of the studio's efforts with catalog titles licensed from Paramount, is certainly among its better efforts to date. The image is sharp and detailed, with deep blacks and good contrast levels. The texture of the film's grain pattern is somewhat inconsistent in this presentation. An occasional shot suggests a touch of light sharpening. Much of the film is fine-grained, while a few sections, notably in the TraviCom sequences, have a much heavier grain pattern that may be inherent to the source. Some of the digital effects shots give themselves away with subtle change in the film's texture, but this too is inherent in the source and is an anomaly that would not be fully eliminated until the advent of digital intermediates in the next decade. (Hardly anyone noticed until Blu-ray websites began posting screenshots.)

The colors are richly saturated, fully bringing out the vivid hues of the locations, which included Uganda, Tanzania and Costa Rica. Detail in faces and costumes, and even the individual hairs on Stan Winston's gorilla suits, are readily visible. Although Warner has used a BD-25 for this 108-minute film, the lack of any real extras has allowed it to achieve an average bitrate of 23.98 Mbps, which isn't great but is adequate to the task of reproducing the film without artifacts.

Congo Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The sound team for Congo created everything from the roars of the killer apes to the surface-to-air missile attack on the expedition's plane to the increasingly intense seismic events that shake Mt. Mukenko during the expedition. Sounds of the jungle spread throughout the listening area, both by day and by night ("When the moon is like that", explains Munro, "every monkey for 200 miles thinks he's Elvis Presley"). In between, we get the sudden eruption of warfare when the group arrives in Africa, an unexpected attack by a large jungle creature, and various other loud events that give Congo's 5.1 track, presented in lossless DTS-HD MA, plenty of opportunities to join in the fun. The dialogue is always clear, which is important, because much of it is intentionally funny, including Joe Don Baker's ranting as Travis and Dylan Walsh's hopelessly naive attempts, as Dr. Eliot, to sound like he knows what he's doing. Jerry Goldsmith's score is a fine example of the late composer's discriminating taste, because it's big and heroic, but not too big and heroic. Congo isn't a serious enough film to withstand too much heroism.

Congo Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Like Paramount's 2003 and 2013 DVDs of Congo, the Blu-ray contains only two trailers: a teaser (480i; 1.33:1; 1:24) and the full theatrical trailer (480i; 1.85:1; 2:30).

Congo Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Congo was critically reviled, but audiences didn't care. Marshall and his team crafted an entertaining piece of escapist fantasy. Parts of the story are silly, but that's true of every fantasy adventure film. (Don't get me started on Raiders of the Lost Ark.) Almost twenty years later, the tech looks clunky in the age of iPhones, and R.J. Travis' "next generation" sounds like ancient history, but the ride is still fun. It's unfortunate that Paramount didn't create any DVD extras that could have been ported over, but the Blu-ray presentation is worthy and, on that basis, recommended.