Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

The wolves of Silicon Prairie.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman April 29, 2015

It's been a fascinating time to be alive these past few decades, to witness up close and personal a history-shaping revolution in the evolution of the personal computer, the growth of the Internet, and the seemingly endless improvements in technology, getting faster and smatter and smaller all at the same time. Computing power that once took up entire rooms slowly sped up and shrunk down to where it became viable for an individual to walk into a store, marvel at the itty-bitty CD-ROM-based video clip of John F. Kennedy's "moon" speech playing on loop, and purchase a machine capable of doing so much more than just basic computations or serving as a glorified typewriter. The evolution of the Internet, all-in-ones, breakthrough handheld devices, the trackpad, voice commands, WiFi, lightweight laptops, horsepower-packed gaming machines, the smartphone, the tablet, and now the all-in-one wristwatch have all shaped the technological ride of the past few decades, making the technology once thought to be the wild imaginings of wide-eyed writers working on the latest installment of everything from Star Trek to Dick Tracy a reality. AMC's Halt and Catch Fire takes audiences back in time to the early 1980s for a look at the ground floor workings of the personal computer revolution, just as the machines were shrinking down and growing not into a nice-to-have but as a necessity in the workplace, in the school, and in the home.

Here comes trouble.

Former IBM employee Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) is a forceful go-getter who finagles himself into a top-tier job at a Dallas firm called Cardiff Electric. He has a vision of building a computer twice as good and half the price of anything his former employer has produced. But he's going to need help doing it. He recruits a demoralized functioning alcoholic office drone named Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy), a computer wiz who sees the potential in the future of computing, to help him reverse engineer an IBM machine and lay the groundwork for their own system. He also recruits the rebellious college student and gifted code writer Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) to his team. But Joe willingly tips off IBM to what he's doing, bringing the full force of the behemoth's legal team down on Cardiff Electric and Joe's boss John Bosworth (Toby Huss). To save the company, Joe, Gordon, and Cameron must bring Cardiff Electric into the personal computing business and outclass IBM where it counts: under the hood and at the cash register.

Halt and Catch Fire offers a dramatically engaging and modestly entertaining look at the inside baseball of big computer business in the 1980s but, more importantly, the power players whose drive, visions, and egos helped shape the industry. There's a good, deep sense of time and character, the show certainly finding its stride from a visual perspective with its blend of warmth and cold at the various ends of the spectrum as it concerns both its characters and the evolving 1980s landscape while also contrasting the people in the world and defining them all beyond actions. The show finds a nice, workable blend in its trio of leads that allows it to build conflict and intimacy on a small scale while operating in a much larger, more densely populated and dangerous environment. The ambitious, confident, and cocky Joe works the system to his benefit, is quick to identify friend and foe, and will stop at nothing to see his vision a reality. The super-smart and visionary Cameron brings more than a gender reversal from type to the show, portraying the rebellious outsider with a cutting edge vision of system linkage and the positive future benefits of the computer, which in many ways clashes with her standoffish and distant ways. Lastly, there's Gordon Clark, a computer genius who has allowed the burdens of life, past failures, present conflict, and a wayward, nonchalant attitude to get in the way of his promising brilliance. Though eclectic on the outside looking in, there's an unmissable force and combined perfection at work in the show's finely honed character triumvirate that, with strong performances, shape the show with a dynamic that's much more tangibly engaging and emotionally satisfying than the otherwise dry plot basics of the burgeoning computer building business.

Despite the strong performances and stronger characters, the show suffers from something of a basic plot arc disconnect. Halt and Catch Fire feels too sterile away from the character drama, too procedural, lacking a tangible sense of audience connection through the core plot drivers and the drama that follows. Where AMC's greatest successes, namely Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, were or are capable of drawing an audience fully into worlds that are obviously distant or nonexistent -- few could relate to the inner workings of a meth empire and nobody can truly relate to a fully fictitious zombie outbreak -- Halt and Catch Fire never quite does make the broader story deeply, intimately, or organically relatable. The cast and characters work double time to spice up the core plot, but it feels almost interchangeable with anything else that might be tangentially related and that would allow the same character depth and the growing connections that come from their shared visions and contrasting styles to shine through. It's not for lack of interest in or familiarity with the basics workings and history of the computer industry. Instead, it's a case of strong characters who are more interesting than the focal plot, who are shaped by that plot but who could be just as dynamic doing something else. Essentially, the show doesn't quite come full circle like AMC's others, never making much of its basics outside of a canvas on which the creative talent finely hones the characters. That's not to say that the core drama isn't engaging, it's to say that basic story -- the procedural bits -- feels secondary to the characters' inner workings, similarities, and differences, and not essential to developing finer themes that fall under the broader umbrella.

Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season arrives on Blu-ray with a fair 1080p transfer that never presents with the clarity, robust color, or pinpoint definition of the format's best. The image pushes warm and features a blend of fairly flat colors, both earthy 70s and early 80s-inspired browns and tans and yellows and some slicker, forward-thinking metallic shades. It's a fairly dim image on top of that with precious few truly bright, light-saturated scenes to enjoy. Black levels push lightly purple and lack precise shadow definition. Details are fair to good, with the transfer picking up basics with ease but rarely capturing that sort of startling lifelike intimacy found on the finest images. Faces, for example, are often flat and pasty with only modest to moderate definition to be seen. Light noise sprinkles throughout but there's not much in the way of banding or blockiness.

Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season features a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The track always jumps at the chance to present little ambient effects that fill in the backgrounds, whether beeps and bloops at an 80s arcade or general office, hotel, or exterior atmospherics. Music is precisely defined and focused with a rich, lively, full stage presence, including a healthy surround enclosure and a balanced low end support element. The opening titles enjoy some creative energetic pulses that naturally push through the stage with full surround and bass support. Much of the show, however, is dialogue intensive, and the spoken word plays with even, accurate presence, with only a few brief examples that go sharper and boomier than normal.

Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season contains all of its supplemental content on disc three. Inside the Blu-ray case, buyers will find a voucher for a UV digital copy.

• Inside Episodes 101-110 (1080p): Episode-by episode summaries and discussions. Included are Episode 101 (5:44), Episode 102 (5:04), Episode 103 (5:02), Episode 104 (5:15), Episode 105 (5:09), Episode 106 (5:21), Episode 107 (5:26), Episode 108 (5:13), Episode 109 (6:13), and Episode 110 (6:08).
• Re-Making the 80s (1080i, 3:33): A look back at the timeframe in which the show takes place and recreating it for television, with inside looks at wardrobe, set design, straddling 70s and 80s design, the show's color palette, and more.
• Rise of the Digital Cowboys (1080i, 2:57): A look at the "Silicon Prairie" setting outside of Dallas, the underlying Western motifs, and character arcs.
• Setting the Fire: Research and Technology (1080p, 5:47): A look at the burgeoning computer industry in Texas, the crew's real life experiences with the time and technology, ensuring technological and period accuracy, real world references, and more.

Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Halt and Catch Fire is an engaging character drama that succeeds despite a fairly dry basic plot. Not as emotionally engaging or fully realized as AMC's best shows, it's still a solid performer and something with a lot of potential going forward considering the unmistakable lead cast chemistry and the carefully tuned emotional and life-approach diversity their characters bring to the show. Anchor Bay's Blu-ray release of Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season offers solid video and audio. Supplements are somewhat limited. Recommended.