Furious 7 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Furious 7 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman August 7, 2019

Universal has released the franchise sequel film 'Furious 7 ' to the UHD format. The new release includes a 2160p/HDR video presentation and a DTS:X soundtrack with a DTS-HD HR 7.1 core. No new supplements are included but the bundled Blu-ray, identical to that which Universal released in 2015, carries over all of the legacy content.

A new, revenge-minded enemy named Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) has his sights set on Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew. But action is the furthest thing from their minds. Dom is working hard to rebuild his relationship with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who has lost her memory. Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) has traded in his street racer for a minivan and is living life as a father with his son Jack (Miller and Charlie Kimsey) and girlfriend Mia (Jordana Brewster). But their transition into a simpler world won't come quietly. Shaw puts DSS Agent and friend of the group, Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), in the hospital and turns his sights on the others. To beat him, however, they're going to need help. Enter Frank Petty (Kurt Russell), a black ops type who promises to aid the crew in bringing Shaw down if they in turn retrieve an advanced global tracking system known as "God's Eye" and rescue its creator, a hacker extraordinaire named Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), before she and the device fall into the wrong hands. Now, the crew must drive around the globe to secure the cargo and ensure a showdown with its nemesis.

For a full film review, please click here.

Note that the UHD disc includes two cuts of the film: Theatrical (2:17:19) and Extended (2:19:53).

Furious 7 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc.

For its UHD release of Furious 7, Universal has taken the film from world-class Blu-ray to a 2160p/HDR presentation that bests the 1080p image in every way. But it's not a dramatic overhaul. It falls into the category of refinement, boosting color depth and contrast while sharpening textures to offer a more screen-commanding feel for clarity and detail that even a reference quality Blu-ray cannot match. Skin details, particularly in close-up, are the clear winners. Look at Vin Diesel in a daytime dialogue exchange around the 18-minute mark. The intimacy of pores and scars, the countable clarity of head and facial stubble, and the overall facial density and detail are all striking. That goes for most every character portrait where sweat, ink, and other elements are likewise commandingly firm and accurate. Clothes are crisp and material definition appears naturally complex. Environments are super sharp, including steely offices, hospital rooms, and dense city street locales. It's all highly revealing and more steadily crisp and accurate than anything the Blu-ray can offer.

The color spectrum is expanded and the UHD takes full advantage, finding more stable and deep blacks, superior shadow detail, and enhanced bright light sources. Take a look at an otherwise mundane shot of a car driving through a cemetery at night in chapter two. The bright light sources -- a lamp, car headlights -- are astonishingly brighter while the low light surroundings find more detail yet more shadowy depth at the same time. Whites are intense and can teeter on blinding the viewer in a hospital scene in chapter four; Dom's white shirt under the hard lighting holds detail but puts out a ton of light at the same time. Still, it's a more pure form of white compared to the creamier looking Blu-ray. Explosions pop with supreme intensity, well beyond the Blu-ray's SDR capabilities. General color depth in slick offices and on cars, building façades, natural greens, and the like enjoy greater stability, more accuracy, and a deeper, more dense output that gives the image a more properly balanced feel and a sense of dimensionality; the Blu-ray seems almost flat by comparison. Skin tones are fuller and more natural, too. This is a very strong refinement over a very good Blu-ray; even at a 2K DI from a digital source fans should find this to be a worthwhile upgrade and investment.

Furious 7 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Both cuts lack true lossless DTS:X Master Audio configurations, settling for a core DTS-HD HR 7.1 expanded to DTS:X. This issue is also encountered by Fast and Furious 6's UHD release. That disc included the DTS-HD HR 7.1 (DTS:X) track for the theatrical cut and a technically paltry, but still sonically capable, DTS 5.1 track for its extended cut. Here, at least both cuts earn the same DTS:X track, though Universal's failure to offer a true "Master Audio" presentation is disheartening, doubly now so considering that the franchise 4K box set does not include updated discs for either release.

The track certainly has some drawbacks. Listen to the action scene in which Hobbs and Shaw duke it out in Hobbs' office in chapter three. There's not as much depth to hits and spills and thuds and shattering glass as one might expect. Music is likewise very full but not quite there in terms of all-out intensity and clarity. An explosion that ends the fight offers strong, but not quite thunderous, bass. A jet flyby late in the film, skimming across the side of the building, isn't the dynamic powerhouse of low end reach or stage-stretching fullness one might expect. All is certainly not lost. A head-on car crash in chapter five offers a seriously rumbly presentation in addition to shattering glass thrown all over the place. Subsequent gunshots are impressively room-filling and detailed with obvious overhead engagement and total stage saturation. Action scenes seem to follow an ebb and flow that ranges between excellence and alright. The track is strong in the aggregate but not of reference quality. Dialogue is well prioritized and nicely detailed from a natural front-center position.

In a vacuum the audio track scores about 4.0. The score above factors in Universal's disappointing specs and failure to update the track for the boxed set release.

Furious 7 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Furious 7's UHD disc contains no supplemental content. All of the extras can be found on the bundled Blu-ray. For convenience, below is a list of what's included. For full supplemental content coverage, please click here. A Movies Anywhere digital copy code is included with purchase.

• Deleted Scenes
• Talking Fast
• Back to the Starting Line
• Flying Cars
• Snatch and Grab
• Tower Jumps
• Inside the Fight
• The Cars of Furious
• Race Wars
• Music Video
• Making of Fast & Furious Supercharged Ride

Furious 7 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The 2160p/HDR video encode is excellent but Universal has failed to include a true DTS:X Master Audio track, instead building it around a DTS-HD HR 7.1 core, the same issue that plagued Fast and Furious 6's UHD release. This track is good, just not great. The included extras on the bundled Blu-ray are fine. Recommended for the picture quality.