6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
The story of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander during World War II and United Nations Commander for the Korean War.
Starring: Gregory Peck, Ivan Bonar, Ward Costello, Nicolas Coster, Marj DusayWar | 100% |
History | 56% |
Biography | 9% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: DTS Mono
Spanish: DTS Mono
German: DTS Mono
Italian: DTS Mono
Portuguese: DTS Mono
Spanish: DTS Mono
Spanish: Castilian and Latin American
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 2.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
MacArthur opens with an interesting crawl with a few lines covering the man's divisive nature, unflappable military command performance in World War II's Pacific theater and during the Korean conflict, and how his battlefield actions and strategies directly and indirectly affected millions of lives around the world. The movie builds up a man of enormous stature and importance in that opening text but can't quite deliver the sort of powerful but picturesque compliment its subject commands. Director Joseph Sargent (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) largely focuses the film on his subject in an often cramped, closely composed frame that allows his actor to do the work of bringing Douglas MacArthur to life. The movie lacks the vitality and stature of its subject, playing with a disconnect of style that tells the story of the man but never cinematically explores it in a meaningful way.
D-Mac.
MacArthur's 1080p transfer is another in a growing line of occasionally adequate and somewhat serviceable but mostly bland catalogue releases from Universal. The image is extraordinarily flat and and painfully lifeless. A blooming effect blows out the lettering on the opening titles. The color palette in general appears very bland. Even green vegetation doesn't produce much punch or vitality. Certainly khaki military colors are flat and monochromatic, and various interior shots are fatigued and dull. Colors are very basic, nothing more. Flesh tones are a bit pasty and black levels struggle to hold depth, often pushing too bright, particularly around the frame's corners. Detailing is bland. Whether those same khaki uniforms or natural vegetation, there's barely any serious crispness to the image, and its inherent flatness does it no favors, either. The image enjoys a few upticks in stability, clarity, detail, depth (even in many close-up shots), and general filmic excellence at times; the surrender sequence midway through the film is a good example where grain tightens up (away from its clumping here and excessive sharpness there) and results in a very pleasing, cinematic image. Generally, however, the transfer struggles to impress. It's watchable but certainly not any kind of definitive home presentation.
MacArthur features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack that has its moments but more often than not delivers a sonically uninteresting but serviceably adequate listen. The opening music is a highlight. It's well detailed and nicely spaced, presenting richly and with impressive vitality. The same cannot be said of many other musical cues or sound effects. Dialogue can occasionally push a bit shallow, and MacArthur's microphone address upon reaching Australia delivers no range at all; it's very cramped and disappointingly tinny. On the flip side, the Japanese surrender sequence -- visually and aurally the single best one in the movie -- offers much more, and borderline substantial, reverberation as the ceremony carries around the stage. Several action scenes lack much authoritative depth or wallop, but the track surprises a few times when planes zip about with full surround usage and natural imaging about the stage.
This Blu-ray release of MacArthur contains no supplemental content. No top menu is included; audio and subtitle options may be accessed in-film via the pop-up menu.
MacArthur's subject is a legend of military strategy and the film explores how his efforts, and his physical stature and command of not only the room or the battlefield but of himself, shaped the geopolitical landscape of the world around him in a way few men ever have. The movie, however, is a rather dull, straightforward, structurally tired picture that hits all of the MacArthur highlights but does so almost in rote. Peck brings a decent sense of passion to the part and fills the shoes admirably, but the rest of the movie around him defines the very proper and descriptive movie review term "meh." Universal's featureless Blu-ray comes with video and audio that are both decent-to-good at their best, passable generally, and disappointing here and there. Worth a look for history buffs if it's priced very, very aggressively.
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