6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 3.3 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.1 |
Jackie Cogan is a professional enforcer who investigates a heist that went down during a mob-protected poker game.
Starring: Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, James Gandolfini, Richard JenkinsCrime | 100% |
Thriller | 58% |
Dark humor | 41% |
Heist | 27% |
Film-Noir | 17% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
New Zealand writer-director Andrew Dominik's "Killing Them Softly" (2012) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment/The Weinstein Company. The only supplemental features on the disc are four deleted scenes and a short making of featurette. In English, with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".
Very few guys know me...
Presented in an aspect ratio of 2.40:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment/The Weinstein Company.
The high-definition transfer appears to have been sourced from the same master which Entertainment in Video (EIV) had access to when they prepared their Blu-ray release of Killing Them Softly for the UK market. Unsurprisingly, detail and image depth are excellent. Color reproduction is also very good - there is a good range of cool but natural greens, blues, browns, and grays. As I mentioned in our review of the EIV release, there are some terrific slow-motion effects in the film that look great. Elsewhere, different cameras with different Super High Speed Lenses were used for other very impressive looking sequences (Dominik and cinematographer Greig Fraser also used Kodak's new 500T 5230 film stock). Needless to say, this is a film with a very unique, very stylish look that looks quite beautiful on Blu-ray. All in all, compression might be marginally better on the EIV release, but I would not say that there are any important discrepancies. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).
There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray disc: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. For the record, optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles have been included for the main feature. When turned on, they appear inside the image frame.
The lossless track is appropriately aggressive during the shootouts, but there are also a few sequences where some very subtle effects are introduced (see Russell's hallucinations). The important political speeches coming from the back are always easy to hear. The dialog is very crisp, stable, and easy to follow throughout the entire film. Finally, there are no audio dropouts or distortions to report in this review.
Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly is one of the very best films to be released theatrically in 2012. I loved it. As far as I am concerned, this is what modern noir films should look like. Now the film is finally available on Blu-ray in the United States. The technical presentation is very good, but once again I must say that I would have loved to see a much better selection of supplemental features. A lengthy interview with Brad Pitt, for instance, would have been great. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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