9 | / 10 |
Users | 4.8 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.7 |
When a seaside community finds itself under attack by a great white shark, three men embark on a quest to kill it before it strikes again.
Starring: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw (I), Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray HamiltonHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 87% |
Adventure | 19% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.36:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS 2.0 Mono
French: DTS 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: DTS 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
BD-Live
D-Box
Mobile features
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Were there “event” summer blockbuster movies before Jaws debuted on what was then a staggering number of screens in late June of 1975? Probably, though you’d be hard pressed to find another film which so seemingly instantaneously captured the public’s imagination and raked in so much lucre, not to mention a perhaps unexpected bevy of critical acclaim. Jaws’s production had been so famously troubled that even co-star Richard Dreyfuss was by his own admission thinking he had signed on to one of the all time disasters in cinema history. Of course, Dreyfuss had instead hitched his star to one of the most epochal films of its era, and perhaps of all time. It’s almost impossible to conceive it now, but Steven Spielberg was hardly a blip on the Hollywood map when he ultimately landed the directorial gig (after at least a couple of others either passed or didn’t pass muster with producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown), but Jaws indelibly established Spielberg as one of the cinema masters of his generation. The film is brisk, brilliantly structured (with a sharp screenplay co-written by original novelist Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb), and what was initially thought to be a huge detriment turned out to be one of the film’s most salient successes: the special effects crew just couldn’t get a realistic looking shark to work properly, and so Spielberg had to invent other ways of suggesting menace. What ensued was a brilliant model of alluding to terror rather than depicting it outright, and Spielberg’s “workaround” gives Jaws a lot of its visceral sense of horror. As any psychiatrist worth his or her salt will tell you, your imagination can conjure fears far more “real” than anything mere reality can present to your actual eyes.
Jaws is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.36:1. There is more often than not a coterie of Universal dislikers (some would say Universal bashers) who are eager to get out their virtual scissors to cut any Universal catalog release's transfer to shreds, but they should take this one small statement into account:
As much attention as image quality typically gets on major Blu-ray releases, for some reason people tend to give the audio quality short shrift a lot of the time. Maybe it's my background as a musician and composer that gets my hackles up about this, but I personally was actually more concerned about the repurposed lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track that adorns this new Blu-ray release of Jaws than I was about any suggested "usual" problems with a Universal catalog release's video. Jaws was released originally with a thrillingly effective mono track (which to Universal's credit is also provided on this Blu-ray courtesy of a DTS 2.0 mix), and I worried about how "tarting up" the original mix would potentially distract from the audio presentation. I needn't have worried. This is very smart repurposing, and if anything tends to be on the cautious side, which is how I personally prefer these repurposed surround mixes. There are certainly wonderful moments of immersion, especially in some of the panicked crowd scenes, but perhaps even more tellingly, in some relatively quieter moments when individual ambient environmental sounds are smartly placed around the sound field. Fidelity is superb and John Williams' towering score sounds magnificent. There's also a new clarity and precision to some of the foley effects (as Spielberg himself points out in the restoration featurette, you can now clearly hear the "dinosaur roar" as the shark meets its fate toward the end of the film).
Jaws continues to be a near perfect film experience now several decades after its release. Terrifying, disturbing and against considerable odds, often very funny, this film put Spielberg firmly on the map and continues to be one of his defining achievements. There's virtually no element out of place in this brilliantly structured film. Performances and direction are spot on and the technical achievements are for the most part stellar. This Blu-ray is simply stunning in all categories. A top notch restoration and transfer supervised and approved by Spielberg himself are augmented by a bevy of fantastic supplements (though it would have been great to have had a Spielberg commentary on this release). Highly recommended.
45th Anniversary Edition
1975
1975
45th Anniversary Edition
1975
45th Anniversary Edition
1975
45th Anniversary Edition
1975
1970s Best of the Decade
1975
45th Anniversary Limited Edition
1975
Academy Award Series
1975
1975
Universal 100th Anniversary
1975
1975
1975
45th Anniversary Edition
1978
1983
2009
1976
[•REC]⁴: Apocalypse / [•REC]⁴: Apocalipsis
2014
2011
2012
Original Unrated Cut
2005
1997
2010
Collector's Edition
1978
2011
1989
2020
Collector's Edition
1992
2018
Lenticular Slipcover
2016
1994
2005
1997