Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

House of Gucci Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 4, 2022

Director Ridley Scott's (Alien, Gladiator) House of Gucci teeters on greatness not because its story is particularly unique but because its characters are particularly engaging and well performed. The film, based on the true story of the Gucci family's fall (and based on Sara Gay Forden's 2001 book The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed), tells the story of the empire's infiltration from the outside and the chaos that followed. Scott directs with a master's eye for detail, cadence, and compelling storytelling, compelling even as the material follows a fairly routine line of evolution. Still, it's based-on-real-life tropes done very well, with Lady Gaga and Adam Driver delivering in-depth and compelling performances as the leads.

Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) has her mind set on success, but she's stuck working a support job at her father's modest trucking business. She believes her fortunes might turn from the better when she meets Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), son of Gucci fashion empire magnate Rodolfo Gucci (Jeremy Irons). The two fall in love. Rodolfo warns his son against her, believing that she, like so many other women, are only interested in money. Maurizio chooses love over family and fortune and is disowned. When Patrizia becomes pregnant, she appeals to her husband's uncle, Aldo (Al Pacino), to return into the family's good graces. She finagles her husband's way back into to the family business when Rodolfo is near death, leading her and her husband to hold half of the company. However, her deceitfulness slowly begins to catch up with her, leaving her little alternative than to plan the unthinkable to save her stature and place in the fame and fortune of the Gucci name.

Like so many of Scott's other films before it, House of Gucci blends high yield narrative plotting, character excellence, filmmaking prowess, and total audience immersion into the experience. Scott crafts a picture not of grand ambition but rather carefully nurtured components that together build a compelling saga of family affairs, wealth, and, eventually, murder. The story's essential beats will likely be familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of modern fashion history, but it is in the way Scott builds the story, manipulates the tension, massages the rough edges, and only then slowly allows the facades to break down that the film takes full shape and finds its stride. Wealth and greed are at the center of the story. These are standard bearer plot devices but they are also timeless plot devices, aiming to the very core of the human condition and the uniqueness of the human mind, heart, and soul. The film's best asset is not its story but rather its keen gaze into the human condition. Scott essentially puts new window dressing on an age-old narrative but does with a superb craftsmanship and A-list actors who may not approach the material in a new way but do get to its heart with impressive depth and clarity.

Gaga's Patrizia Reggiani is the film's heartbeat. For better or for worse in the larger Gucci family picture the character is the outsider who finagles her way into a fashion empire and uses both her body and her brains to maneuver the company into a place of great success and, ultimately, personal failure. Her performance is richly layered, again like so much of the rest of the movie not particularly novel but here given a welcome sense of intensity, depth, and intelligence to allow the story to build around her as she fights to seize her dreams and, later, as she fights to salvage what is left of them. Her work here is amongst the best of her burgeoning film career in a part that is almost unrecognizable beyond the musical stage persona, falling into character with effortless fullness and exactness.

The remainder of the cast excels under Gaga's leadership umbrella. Driver, who is amongst the best working today, delivers another top tier performance, here as the reluctant heir and businessman who wants only to live his life at his pace, by his rules, and on his timetable, but because he seeks reprieve from the family name and the pressures of running the family business by escaping into the arms of love, he ultimately discovers he's not only on track to take a top position at Gucci against his true life's desire, but that his true life's desire may spell more trouble for him than he could have ever realized. Driver is the perfect fit for the role, not so much for his impressive physicality but for the depth of his work, his ability to walk that juxtaposition between family name and self-identification. More than any other his character undergoes the most arduous arc as he's forced to find his inner "Gucci" while only striving to find himself. Pacino and Irons cannot quite so easily escape their typical screen personas and transform themselves for their parts, but Letto delivers a strikingly deep effort that is both physically transformative and emotionally complex; his work rivals both Gaga and Driver for film superiority.

House of Gucci Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

House of Gucci looks superb on Blu-ray. The image is tack-sharp, revealing the finest point textural might revealed by its digital source content. The image offers striking facial and skin complexities, tactile hair density, refined clothing lines, and superior clarity to various location details throughout a fairly wide-ranging array of places. The image's textural might holds steady throughout and there are no downturns to soft or smudgy elements. Colors are bold, offering pinpoint precision to nuanced depth and output. Again, clothes are an obvious highlight for vivid, expressive color output and high yield saturation. Contrast and temperature fall into a neutral range; there is not overly warm content nor frigidly cold or desaturated color tuning at play. Black levels are perfect and skin tones look fantastic. The picture reveals very little source noise and no major encode issues of note. This is a terrific Blu-ray presentation from Universal.

House of Gucci Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The supplied DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless soundtrack offers a precise audio experience that balances all elements around the stage and delivers exacting definition to every critical sonic output. Dialogue is, of course, first and foremost amongst the audio track's needs, and the spoken word is in fine condition, playing with consistent clarity and front center replacement. It is always clear and audible and well prioritized for the duration. Music stretches far, engages the surrounds as needed, presents with adequate subwoofer output, and holds to lifelike detail from beginning to end, whether popular music or score. Ambient effects and general atmosphere are nicely integrated and lifelike. The track is not populated with overtly intense sound elements, but what is here is managed and presented very well

House of Gucci Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of House of Gucci includes three featurettes. A DVD copy of the film and an Apple TV digital copy code are included with purchase. This release ships with a non-embossed slipcover.

• The Rise of the House of Gucci: Masking Of (1080p, 10:14): Exploring project origins, honing the script, Ridley Scott's direction, cast and performances, Leto's physical transformation, and more.
• The Lady of the House (1080p, 5:35): Zeroing in on Lady Gaga's performance.
• Styling House of Gucci (1080p, 5:26): Exploring wardrobe, makeup, set design, and jewelry.

House of Gucci Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

House of Gucci lacks narrative ingenuity (even as it's based on a true story) but its relative lack of novelty is more than masked by both Scott's expert workmanship and the cast's superb performances, particularly from Gaga, Driver, and Leto. The film is long but never feels too slow or to hurried through complex material; it's evenly constructed and a pleasure to watch unfold. Universal's Blu-ray is a bit thin on extras, but the video and audio presentations are nearly above reproach. Highly recommended.