Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.5

Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 24, 2020

Chances are probably pretty good that if you recognize the name of the band Eagles of Death Metal at all, it’s most likely not because you’re a diehard fan who has followed the exploits of the group for years, but because you were as horrified as the rest of the world to read about the band’s inadvertent involvement in the devastating series of attacks by terrorists that afflicted Paris and environs in November of 2015. A lot of so-called Behind the Music documentaries spend untold time devoted to various frictions in and failings of bands and the individual members in them, but Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis (Our Friends) manages to give at least a bit of background on its titular aggregation while also detailing the post traumatic stress disorder various members of the Eagles of Death Metal and surviving members of the audience suffered after the shocking attack at the historic Paris music venue known as the Bataclan. Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis (0ur Friends) is therefore undeniably visceral a lot of the time, with some moving (if often disturbing) recountings of the night of terror and its wake, which in some ways may have been even more psychologically roiling than the actual event.

Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis (Our Friends) is almost an excruciatingly emotional piece to watch, and while much of that emotion is of course tied to the terrorist attack and what it meant to both the band and survivors in the audience, there’s quite interestingly a whole additional layer of an emotional component granted courtesy of the odd but completely endearing friendship between Eagles of Death Metal co-founders Jesse Hughes and Josh Homme. The documentary opens with some absolutely riveting if completely raw footage of Hughes being interviewed for French television as the band returned to Paris to “finish” the concert that was so tragically interrupted at the Bataclan, footage which more than amply demonstrates how deeply the attack affected Hughes, but then the documentary quickly gets into the history of both Hughes and Homme, spending about the first 30 or so minutes of the piece charting the interaction between the two and how that gave birth to Eagles of Death Metal.

The two met in the region of Palm Springs and Palm Desert as kids, but they both make clear that despite the obviously upscale ambience of this area, they both were pretty firmly blue collar. Hughes was a transplant and a kind of nerdy kid who was picked on by bullies, and in fact the way that Hughes and Homme actually ultimately met is when Homme, whom Hughes describes as "a 6'4" Viking", came to Hughes' defense at a high school party where Hughes had been thrown into a swimming pool and not allowed to leave. (Hughes likens this to being in a John Hughes movie.) Homme was evidently a successful enough musician early on to be touring shortly after this (the documentary is a little vague on this aspect, though it does spend some time detailing Homme's "other" group, The Queens of the Stone Age), and would only return to "The Des" (as he calls it), sporadically, ultimately finding Hughes married with a young son. When Hughes discovered his wife had been having an affair, his world was more or less wrecked, and Homme suggested they found the band that became Eagles of Death Metal.

What this seeming detour provides is a really touching account of two guys who just kind of "clicked" despite any manifest differences in their personalities. It does seem throughout the piece that Hughes is arguably a bit more dependent upon Homme for emotional support than vice versa, but some of this perception might admittedly be due to the fact that Homme was not in attendance at the Bataclan, since his touring schedule with other bands keeps him from being a regular member of Eagles of Death Metal, and that the documentary caught Hughes at a particularly vulnerable time in his life. That said, it's obvious that Hughes does rely upon Homme, and that's nowhere more apparent than late in the documentary when Homme is able to show up in Paris at the last moment for the post-attack "return" concert, giving Hughes a little jolt of adrenaline to help him through the incredibly emotional circumstances (the documentary has already detailed the "cameo" appearance by Hughes and some other members of the band at a U2 concert in Paris).

But what's also evident, and something that gives this piece a really unique cathartic power, is how Hughes, however vulnerable and even "needy" he can seem to be, is also an incredibly resilient guy with both a keen analytical mind and an empathetic heart. One of the documentary's most visceral moments is toward the end when it returns to the French television interview shown briefly in the opening moments and we get a longer snippet with Hughes, who is, as stated above, obviously (in his own words) "a raw nerve" (see screenshot 11 for how obviously distraught he was during the interview). He first gives an impassioned speech that sounds like a real life survivor's equivalent of the famous "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" sentiment of a certain guns right group in the United States (something that may frankly surprise some people), but he then just as quickly (amid a barrage of f-bombs and other verbiage that probably got bleeped during the broadcast) urges people to forget all the political ramifications and side elements like guns, and to simply come to the concert and have fun, thereby proving to any terrorists that their ultimate goal to frighten people will have failed. It's an amazing few moments, and indelibly encapsulates the terrorist event, some of the political ripples, and what Hughes wants the final legacy of rock 'n' roll to be.

While no actual graphic footage is included (thankfully, in my opinion), there's an unbelievably visceral quality to reminiscences of the event by Hughes and other band members, as well as several survivors who are interviewed. Many of the people in the audience who are interviewed mention how they feel "reborn" in a way after such a horrific incident, and how they're seeking to make something positive out of such an inherently negative situation. Part of that positivity is exemplified in their obvious love of Eagles of Death Metal, and Hughes in particular, and this documentary shows quite admirably that it's a mutual admiration society.

Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis (Our Friends) is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.00:1. This is a fine looking presentation that won't knock any videophile socks off, but which gets the job done with consistent amounts of clarity and detail levels, at least in most of the contemporary shot interview segments. The outdoor work with Homme can look just a bit softer than some of the interior interviews with Hughes, but most of the other interviews tend to be as sharp as the Hughes elements. There's a wide variety of archival video on tap, and that varies pretty widely in quality. Some of the darker material can look a little noisy or splotchy at times, as in screenshot 19. There's also some intermittent banding that crops up during some changes in lighting conditions.

Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis (Our Friends) features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0 mixes. The musical elements are admittedly opened up and get much better accountings of the low end in particular in the surround track, but this is in essence a talking heads documentary where the music is pretty much used interstitially, and often with voiceover assuming primary focus in the mix. All of the music sounds clear and energetic, and the interview segments all sound fine, but those without a surround setup are really not going to be missing all that much by going with the stereo track.

Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 2:24)

Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I found Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis (Our Friends) to be a uniquely moving viewing experience. It offers a wealth of intimate detail into the emotional life of Hughes in particular, but also a number of the other unfortunate people who were in the Bataclan that fateful evening. But even more than the horrifying terrorist attack that is ostensibly the center of this story, it's the friendship between Hughes and Homme that really resonates. That, along with the kind of implied (and actually stated outright by Hughes) "f--- you" that the band's return to the stage offered to terrorists, is really the story of human resilience in the face of unimaginable tragedy, and it gives this documentary a really distinctive gravitas. Technical merits are solid, and Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis (Our Friends) comes Highly recommended.