6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
South African journalist Donald Woods is forced to flee the country after attempting to investigate the death in custody of his friend the black activist Steve Biko.
Starring: Kevin Kline, Denzel Washington, Penelope Wilton, Josette Simon, Zakes MokaeBiography | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
None
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Maybe it was the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or at least the scabrous comments from diehard musical theater fans aghast at what they perceived to be the disastrous film version of A Chorus Line , but it’s interesting to note that Sir Richard Attenborough, after having helmed that much maligned film version of the musical, returned in a way to some of the same issues he had dealt with in 1983’s multiple Academy Award winning epic biography Gandhi when he made Cry Freedom four years after Gandhi and two years after A Chorus Line. Much as was the case with Gandhi, Cry Freedom is culled from real life, and it has a potent subtext (and actually text) of a “native” population yearning to escape the yoke of interlopers who have assumed a supposedly superior position. Cry Freedom is a bit more of a so-called “two hander” than Gandhi was, with the interplay between South African activist Steven Biko (Denzel Washington, Academy Award nominated for this performance) and a white newspaper editor named Donald Woods (Kevin Kline) giving the story a somewhat dialectical quality. There are some interesting similarities between Cry Freedom and A Dry White Season, which came along a couple of years after this film, not just with regard to their depictions of “race relations”, but perhaps even more saliently with regard to how they show that even supposed free thinking liberals can stand to be prodded to become even more “woke” (in modern parlance).
Cry Freedom is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Umbrella Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. My hunch is this is probably an older master, which actually turns out to have both pluses and minuses, at least when understood within the context of this being a Universal release. Unlike a lot of Universal's relatively "older" catalog material that initially made it to high definition, there doesn't appear to have been much if any digital scrubbing done to this master, and so there's a rather healthy, and in fact at times rather gritty looking, grain field in evidence throughout the presentation. On the other hand, there's also been no real restoration done here, as evidenced by things like fairly significant wobble during the credits and some minor but still detectable signs of age related wear and tear. Color timing looked just slightly off to me, frankly more so with regard to the first hour or 45 minutes or so, where things look skewed toward yellow, making some flesh tones look kind of jaundiced. Things warm up at least a bit further on into the story, and some of the primaries, especially blues, are quite vivid. Detail levels are very good to excellent throughout the presentation for the most part, but some material which can sometimes be part of opticals can look pretty ragged and ill defined. My score is 3.75.
Cry Freedom features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track that capably supports the sometimes noisy environments of some of the squalid ghettos, while also rendering the Academy Award nominated score with nice fidelity and a generally very warm sound. The film evidently had some 70mm exhibitions with 6 track sound, and I kind of wondered what a 5.1 rendering would have added to some of the crowd scenes and the musical elements, but what's here suffices perfectly well. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout, though some of the accents are a bit on the heavy side, and unfortunately this release does not have any optional subtitles (that I could find, anyway).
Not only are there no supplements on this disc, this is actually menu-less, authored to boot directly to the film after the brief Umbrella Entertainment masthead. I wasn't able to restart the film after it had played once without ejecting it and reloading it.
Those who had some passing qualms about how A Dry White Season depicted a white man's "awakening" (when any sane person probably would have been wide "awake" from the get go) may have the same general reaction to Cry Freedom, and the film arguably might have done better to have simply concentrated on Biko and his struggle. But there is a lot of riveting material here, brought to life by an able and commited cast. Ronnie Taylor's evocative cinematography is alternately gorgeous and harrowing, and the Oscar nominated score is rousing and emotional. Technical merits are generally solid, and Cry Freedom comes Recommended.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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