6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
After his wife is killed while performing relief work in Central America, a doctor's patients begin delivering messages from her from the afterlife. On a quest to determine what his lost soul mate wants, the doctor is forced to accept the impossible.
Starring: Kevin Costner, Susanna Thompson, Joe Morton, Ron Rifkin, Kathy BatesSupernatural | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | 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 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Dragonfly could be considered a ghost story of sorts, the tale of a widower haunted -- or maybe helped -- by the spirit of his recently deceased wife who is attempting to communicate critical information to him from beyond the grave. The film derives its name from her favorite creature which has a penchant for popping up throughout the story in ways that draw her husband towards his future. The man is understandably both terrified of the prospect and welcoming of the possibility that something of his past life remains that will give him a brighter future. The movie is full of potential but unfortunately forges a rather lackluster path towards an admittedly moving if not manufactured end; it’s too bad the lead-up is built on and around routine if not scattered plot elements and a tone and tenor that can’t quite decide if the film is medical thriller, horror story, broken hearted romance, or pretty much anything or everything else and in between.
Dragonfly buzzes onto Blu-ray with a 1080p AVC encoded presentation. The image is OK: hardly great, hardly terrible. It shows mild signs of digital processing. Grain appears on the unnaturally sharp side and presents without much character to it. Details are decent -- the image shows no major signs of extreme scrubbing to wear down and smooth out basics -- and prove capable of revealing various facial pores and wrinkles, clothing lines and seams, and environmental odds and ends in the hospital and around town and, later in the movie's third act, in Venezuela, with satisfying, though hardly noteworthy, complexity. Colors are dreary and dull, partly a component of the movie's somewhat subdued and depressed visual structure; there's just not much punch, depth, and nuance at work in this one. Even in the aforementioned Venezuelan outdoors, where dense greens and blue skies prevail, there's precious little feel for intense tonal output, a shame given the rich landscapes the movies traverses. The image suffers from the odd spot and speckle, spiking in some scenes while leaving others entirely unmarred. Viewers might spot some trace edge enhancement examples but there are few other source or encode issues of note in play. This is a very midline presentation; adequate at best in most ways and not fatally flawed in any manner.
Much like the video presentation, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is passable but no great shakes. The track struggles with prioritization early on when Joe speaks with Emily on the phone; the rainfall competes with the dialogue and works with the rather flat sonic signature to make the spoken word difficult to hear with total clarity. The track certainly isn't wanting for more raw engagement. Music in this scene plays with solid front end intensity and enough surround support and low end output to carry the material to broadly satisfying, though hardly rewarding, detail. Some of the higher output sonic moments are just flat. Take a scene in chapter nine, around the 85 minute mark, when music and rushing waters, predominantly, merge in a tense scene that offer ample output but absolutely no finesse. It's one of many in a string of generally disappointing, but crudely effective, listening elements. Dialogue at least holds center and there are some interesting natural ambient effects scattered throughout, including, again, in that third act in the Venezuelan brush.
Dragonfly contains several extras which must be accessed in-film via the pop-up menu. There is no top menu, and hitting the top menu button
on the remote returns users to the player's home screen. No DVD or digital copies are included. This release does not ship with a slipcover.
Dragonfly recycles stale content and struggles to find viability or build any feel for care or concern for its characters. It's clumsily paced, performances give no real effort, and the story isn't of much value. It's a so-so movie at best and it's fitting its Blu-ray is equally so-so. Obviously sourced form a DVD era master and lacking a finessed soundtrack, the A/V presentation is nothing at all special. The extra also carryover from that timeframe, and the deleted scenes are in such poor shape as to border on unwatchable. Skip it.
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