Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Monos Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 22, 2021

Years ago when our sons were still relatively young, my wife and I took a family vacation to Europe, spending quite a bit of time in England, where my father had been born. We did a lot of frankly “touristy” things, and one day we spent hours in various lines at the Tower of London waiting to see things like the Crown Jewels, but one of the most memorable experiences of that day was the literal gaggle of British schoolchildren, all in their little matching uniforms, completely (and I mean completely) out of control and running roughshod over the entire facility, screaming and yelling and even pushing adults out of the way as they frolicked. At one point, I turned to my wife and joked, “Suddenly Lord of the Flies makes so much more sense.” William Golding’s 1954 novel has been rightly celebrated as one of the more incisive deconstructions of often troublesome “human nature”, and it was of course more than memorably adapted by Peter Brook into the 1963 Lord of the Flies. While the 1990 remake probably can’t hold a candle to the original film adaptation, it at least allowed me my first opportunity to share the above anecdote in my review. In press notes that are still available online courtesy of the useful "Wayback Machine", Monos' co-writer and director Alejandro Landes openly admits that Monos owes more than a bit to not just Lord of the Flies, but also to Beau Travail and Heart of Darkness (note that this latter link points to a DVD rather than Blu-ray).

While there are some underlying connections between Monos and Lord of the Rings, there are also some salient differences. While both stories involve younger people on isolated islands, Monos takes place on its titular island, which is part of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. While certain contextual elements are never really fully explained, there hasn't been a plane crash leaving the focal characters stranded, and instead they seem to be "natives" who have enlisted in some kind of paramilitary organization. These characters are also a bit older than the kids in Lord of the Flies, and, unlike the schoolchildren in the Golding tale, they do have something amounting to "adult" supervision, though considering what ends up happening, that may not exactly be a good thing.

There are some curious aspects to Monos which may actually work against the film's obvious attempts to deconstruct "human nature" in much the same way that Lord of the Flies did. While the film focuses on the group of young paramilitary types, there's also a hostage situation involving a female doctor (Julianne Nicholson, along with Moisés Arias as one of the paramilitary kids, arguably the most relatively known quantity in terms of the actors), and there are also some rather odd choices in sidebar material, including the arrival of what might jokingly be referred to as the squadron's First Cow. These kind of out there story elements compete with what is arguably the film's strongest presentational aspect, its reliance on some of the stunning vistas on the island of Monos.

As a result, the film can come off as slightly schizophrenic at times. It might have been better to have either concentrated on the interpersonal relationships in the paramilitary group, and the breakdowns that occur, or the hostage drama involving the doctor. As it stands, while there is certainly visceral content in both storylines, the two elements tend to work against each other, even though they're part of the same overarching tale. Performances are generally quite well done, though, and director Landes and cinematogrpher Jasper Wolf certainly have an eye for arresting framings.

Monos Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Monos is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Studios with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Captured with Arri Alexa Minis and finished at a 2K DI (both data points courtesy of the IMDb), this is an often striking looking film, with an interesting greenish grading a lot of the time which can frankly make things look a bit unnatural, but which lends a certain forested quality to all of the outdoor footage. There are a variety of stylistic quirks that are employed, and so clarity and fine detail levels can be fairly variable at times, but in the bulk of the presentation, detail levels are excellent and the wide framings also have considerable depth of field at times.

Note: This disc had a very curious anomaly that I encountered in two different players: this bare bones disc boots to the FBI warning(s) and then goes straight into the Universal logo and the film. At various times when I would press play, it would do the FBI warning(s), and then the Universal logo, and then for some reason double back to the FBI warning(s) and then stop itself, which booted me back out to the main menu of the player. This happened more than once on two different players, but seemed to be random, since both of them also played the disc fine on other attempts.

Monos Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Monos features a nicely immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (mostly) in Spanish. Since so much of the film takes place out of doors, there is a glut of nicely spacious ambient environmental sounds sprinkled through the side and rear channels with a fair degree of consistency. A number of relatively violent showdowns can also add energy to the sound design, including some brief bursts of gunfire. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout this problem free track. English subtitles are forced and cannot be removed, at least insofar as I was able to discover.

Monos Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Not only are there no supplements included on this Blu-ray disc, there's not even a Main Menu. The disc boots to the FBI warning(s) and then goes right into the Universal logo and the film. See the note in the Video comments about some weird anomalies I encountered when playing this disc.

Monos Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's a lot of interesting content in Monos, but I couldn't help but think on more than one occasion that there were two films competing with each other in this story. The group of young paramilitary types has a whole coterie of issues it faces, and then there's the hostage drama involving the doctor, and while the two elements certainly intersect, I'm not entirely sure that the film might have been more forceful and ultimately powerful had it been two separate films. That said, this offers some extremely evocative cinematography, and a number of the performances are quite interesting. Technical merits are generally solid, and with caveats noted, Monos comes Recommended.