Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Overlord Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 5, 2019

The video game franchise Wolfenstein centers around a lone American hero named B.J. Blazkowicz whose sole purpose in life, it seems, is to not only rid the world of Nazis, but fight and put an end to their horrific experiments that have created grossly mutated creatures and an army of super soldiers. The franchise got its start on the PC back in the early 1980s, but it was 1992's Wolfenstein 3D that would truly propel the franchise forward and reinvent the video game landscape forever, a landmark release that ushered in the era of the first-person shooter. The franchise has recently enjoyed a critically acclaimed rebirth that continues to put players in control of Blazkowicz, fighting the same battles with more detailed plots and characterizations and, of course, all of the modern gaming horsepower transforming his enemies from digital sprites to fully realized characters and the environments from spartan layouts to complex worlds. Mention of the game series is practically unavoidable when discussing Director Julius Avery's (Son of a Gun) Overlord, a movie awash in the Wolfenstein spirit that focuses on American soldiers who face off against Nazi mutants in one of the most bloody and pulpy World War II films ever made.

On the eve of D-Day, American paratroopers, as part of Operation Overlord, are ordered to drop behind enemy lines and disrupt the Germans' flow of supplies and communications and to defend key inland entry points to better pave the way for a successful sea-based invasion along the French coast. The drop is a nightmare; planes and passengers are shot to pieces and only a portion of the paratroopers safely plummet to the earth below. Amongst them are a handful of G.I.s that include Private Boyce (Jovan Adepo), an inexperienced infantryman, and Corporal Ford (Wyatt Russell), who is dedicated to completing his team's mission to destroy a key radio tower in a nearby town. When Boyce is forced into the church where the radio tower has been located, he witnesses in its bowels horrific experiments, inhuman creations, and crazed Nazi scientists and leadership. With the help of a young local woman (Mathilde Ollivier), the G.I.s choose to infiltrate the lab in hopes of dismantling it while at the same time continuing on-mission to destroy the target tower.

Overlord strives not to craft a realistically inclined fictional tale from World War II but rather one that's off-the-wall chaotic, comically violent, gruesomely gory, and removed enough from history to be labeled "fantasy" while still adhering to core historical truths to give the illusion of reality. The picture is bloody pulp escapism, a B-movie with A-list production values. It’s a style that’s not necessarily en vogue but it’s also not something that has ever really removed itself from the cinema landscape. It's a marriage between Quentin Tarantino and John Carpenter, though lacking the former's biting precision and the latter's graphic relentlessness (though Overlord is plenty graphic as it is). Still, Avery manages to craft a picture with its own identity, even if it feels like a collaboration amongst other filmmakers and a variation on a story long established in the video game world.

Avery does balance the film extraordinarily well, never at all pushing an overwhelming humor but it’s clear in the subtext that the film was made with the proverbial tongue planted in the proverbial cheek. Even through the viscera and violence and violated characters and some very serious scenes of wartime action, child endangerment, and the true horrors of war, the film never feels at all serious in nature. It’s built for entertainment, and it’s built very well from the top down. Production design is first-rate, meshing era specifics with some ungodly practical and digital creature and gore effects. The film is nicely acted, though almost all of the characters beyond Boyce, Ford, Chloe, her brother Paul, and the Nazi Captain Wafner exist with precious little complexity; the gaggle of G.I.s are almost as faceless as the random Nazis, built only to the point that they are recognizable as “guy with token accent” or “photographer," for example, characters filling shoes rather than filling integral story components.

The film’s folly is its sluggish middle stretch. Overlord starts off with a bang, a ridiculously intense, loud, and frankly frightening sequence featuring allied planes full of paratroopers flying over enemy territory and taking massive amounts of ground fire that results in a number of gruesome casualties and a narrow escape from an enflamed aircraft. The finale is, of course, as bloody and as relentlessly action-packed as one would expect, but the picture slows down and plays out too long in its middle stretch as the survivors get their bearings and begin to piece together the truth that they are not just fighting the Nazi war machine but also the horrific creations born of the Reich’s most hellish scientific minds. Trim the middle stretch here and there and the resultantly tighter movie would rise considerably within its pulpy genre ranks.

Overlord Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Overlord was shot digitally which doesn't quite find the vintage, grainy, filmic look that might have better enhanced the movie's tone and style. It is nevertheless a pleasantly dense and highly agreeable image. Noise is present to some degree in many scenes, with much of the film playing out in lower light interiors and nighttime exteriors. Textures are consistently strong, with high-yield detailing to be found on well-worn military uniforms, stone buildings, rubble, and certainly in the bowels of the Nazi laboratory where equipment, mutated body parts, and grimy surfaces create an eerie Re-Animator kind of visual vibe. Of course, one of the highlights is the visibility of various wounds and gore which, particularly in the third act, reveal an incredible amount of both practical and digital detail that ups the visual ante, critical components that the Blu-ray highlights with stomach-churning clarity. Colors are generally drab in the lower light and nighttime shots as well as throughout the dreary underground lab. Fiery explosions and plenty of red blood are highlights, with a number of smaller color details impressing as the visual construction allows. Black levels, so critical to supporting the film, are generally fine if not falling slightly towards the "raised" end of the spectrum. Flesh tones appear unproblematic. Source and compression issues are next to nonexistent. This is a first-rate transfer from Paramount.

Overlord Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Overlord's Dolby Atmos soundtrack can be summarized in a single word: bonkers. The track is a delight of sonic mayhem, stage expansion and extension, potent bass, and intensely and insanely fun full-stage saturation. Every action scene is a delight, cranking up the sonic mayhem and making full use of every speaker in the configuration, including the subwoofer, to paint a chaotic picture of wartime insanity. Right from the outset on the plane full of paratroopers, the track struts its stuff, which includes engine hum and interior rattle and eventually features bullets ripping through the plane's bottom half, explosions popping all around the aircraft, screaming men, all variety of wartime chaos that the track introduces and executes with startling precision, placement, and clarity. Such holds true for every shootout throughout the film and particularly in the film's climactic action scene. Every inch of the stage is filled with perfectly defined and carefully placed sound details that instantly and fully draw the listener into the battles and environments, where every shot, scream, crash, bang, and bullet slam find their proper, harmoniously balanced place. Overhead speakers are mostly folded in rather than discretely used, though some loudspeaker announcements do offer some nice and obviously positioned overhead usage. "Reserved" is not in this track's vocabulary, though lighter support effects do help better define various scenes when the action isn't front-and-center. Musical clarity and stage saturation are terrific and dialogue is clear and detailed from its natural front-center position. This is a reference quality track from start to finish.

Overlord Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Overlord's Blu-ray release contains a single extra titled The Horrors of War that branches down into six featurettes which are outlined below. A DVD copy of the film and an iTunes digital copy code are included with purchase. This release ships with a non-embossed slipcover.

• Creation (1080p, 11:04): A discussion of the themes underneath the fun, Billy Ray's script, Julius Avery's direction, casting, J.J. Abrams' talents, production design and set construction, costumes, the cast's military training, and more.
• Death Above (1080p, 7:18): A look at the film's opening sequence.
• Death on the Ground (1080p, 9:16): The importance of the film's opening act tone, Mathilde Ollivier's work on the film, set design secrets, the Wafner character and Pilou Asbæk's performance, prosthetics, and Iain De Caestecker's work and character.
• Death Below (1080p, 6:25): The film's merging of War and Fantasy-Horror, the importance of characterization, key locations including the "underworld," and production design details.
• Death No More (1080p, 12:19): This piece focuses on creature design and effects, the importance of practical effects, weapons and weapon maintenance, and set interconnectivity.
• Brothers in Arms (1080p, 5:03): In praise of Julius Avery's direction and J.J. Abrams' qualities and contributions.

Overlord Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Overlord offers amplified World War II mayhem built for entertainment, not historical record. The picture stutters through a relatively slow-paced second act but offers a terrifyingly dense, intense, and bloody open and a gloriously gruesome finale. Much of the film is stock, relying on the chaos, violence, viscera, and relative novelty of it all, not character depth or narrative purpose, to draw audiences. The film is fine in that context. It would have been better with tighter editing and a little more balance between traditional War movie stylings and comic book absurdity, but it's still a fun time at the gory movies. Paramount's Blu-ray delivers solid 1080p video, a reference quality Atmos track, and a few extras. Recommended.