6.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
British spy thriller and spin-off of the BBC television series. During a seemingly routine handover, terrorist suspect Adem Qasim escapes from MI5 custody and goes on the run. As disgraced former head of MI5 Harry Pearce is also missing, it is left to his protégé Will Holloway to find Harry and stop the alleged impending terrorist attack on the capital city.
Starring: Peter Firth, Kit Harington, Jennifer Ehle, Elyes Gabel, Tuppence MiddletonAction | 100% |
Thriller | 79% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
If there’s one thing that recent films like Sicario and now MI-5 should have taught security and/or police types, it’s don’t transport prisoners if there’s even a miniscule threat of a traffic jam. In a scene that plays surprisingly similarly to one in the Denis Villeneuve drug trafficking drama, MI-5 posits a team attempting to get a high value prisoner from Point A to Point B, only to find their plans stymied by that most mundane of contemporary urban problems, traffic that is at a dead stop. In a hyperbolic and frankly maddeningly contrived and therefore frustrating sequence, the security team quickly find themselves overrun by operatives on motorcycles, bad guys who pretty easily are able to free the supposed captive, a nefarious terrorist named Adem Qasim (Elyes Gabel). This escape then sends a somewhat convoluted series of plot machinations into motion. MI-5 is a feature film based on the long running series Spooks (which airs as MI- 5 in some markets), and in fact the film itself was released under the title Spooks: The Greater Good, a title which perhaps better represents the supposedly salient emotional content of the film, whereby long suffering Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) finds his history in the intelligence service colored by the many hard choices he’s had to make, some of which wallowed in moral shades of gray.
MI-5 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. This is a nicely sharp and extremely well detailed presentation, one which offers abundant fine detail in close-ups. While there are occasional forays into rather aggressive color grading at times (often to the expected blue end of the spectrum), detail levels are generally excellent throughout, even in some of the darkest sequences. A couple of CGI sequences, including a massive explosion, tend to look slightly softer when compared to the bulk of the presentation. Contrast and black levels are both solid throughout, and there are no issues with image instability.
MI-5's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is excellent realized, with great panning effects in the opening moments as a helicopter flies over a busy traffic jam in London, and then moving on to a number of other well done, and often quite boisterous, effects, including expected elements like gunfire and explosions. Even some relatively "calm" interior sequences are rife with surround activity documenting the busy sonic environment of MI-5 headquarters. Dialogue is also cleanly presented and is well prioritized on this problem free track.
MI-5 is at times unavoidably derivative, but it does manage to craft a rather interesting story involving various competing interests within the intelligence community. Harry Pearce is a great character, and Firth is able to invest him with a dogged, "been there, seen that" ambience that is rumpled and lived in feeling. Harrington makes "the next generation" just as appealing in a different way, and the supporting cast does uniformly excellent work. Well paced if not quite as dependent on huge set pieces as some espionage thrillers tend to be, MI-5 sports generally superior technical merits and comes Recommended.
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30th Anniversary Edition
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