The Good German Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

The Good German Blu-ray Movie Review

Damn, Spidey's a real jerk.

A handful of noted American directors have been getting lots of love on UHD as of late, with recent waves of domestic and import releases celebrating the diverse back catalogs of David Cronenberg, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, and more. You can certainly add Steven Soderbergh's name to that list -- he's not only perhaps the biggest outsider of the bunch, but his body of work has jumped between almost every genre imaginable. In fact, all of Soderbergh's pre-2020 output for WB has been issued to 4K during the past year, with the likes of Magic Mike, the Ocean's Trilogy, Contagion and, as of this week, The Informant! and 2006's The Good German. The latter stands shoulder-high as a particularly noteworthy outlier, a visually and thematically ambitious film that flopped hard at the box office, didn't do so well with the critics, and never even earned a Blu-ray release despite being released on home video a year after the then-new format's launch. Warner Bros. has finally prepped The Good German for re-evaluation on 4K and Blu-ray almost 20 years later, making it the rare big-studio title to execute two full format jumps in a single bound.

The Good German Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As usual, please see my separate review of the 4K edition for a general overview of The Good German's unique visual aesthetic, one in which Steven Soderbergh made use of equipment commonly used during Hollywood's Golden Age to mimic an era-specific visual design -- this even extends to compositions, screen wipes, and other editing techniques, and real archival historical footage has been inserted as well. (Other elements such as "rear projection" accomplished via green screens, tweaked film grain levels, and the classic "Academy" 1.33:1 aspect ratio* are also employed to seal the deal.) The Good German was reportedly finished at 2K during post-production when its color footage was converted to black-and-white -- with grain occasionally added or tweaked to disguise the intermittent presence of that historical footage -- and as such, the resulting source material has been transferred quite capably to Blu-ray as seen in these 20 direct-from disc screenshots. (Had The Good German been released on the format in 2007, things wouldn't have turned out so well.) This is a handsome and striking 1080p/SDR image indeed, one that will be enjoyed by anyone with a small to medium-sized display as it features plenty of strengths while only occasionally showing trace artifacts during dense, foggy, or heavily diffused scenes. Within format limitations, though, it's definitely a winner.

* - It's been reported that The Good German was actually shown theatrically at 1.66:1, a common European format, but this is not the first time that director Steven Soderbergh changed a film's aspect ratio for home video.

The Good German Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For my thoughts on the DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix, see my recent review of the 4K/Blu-ray combo pack.

The Good German Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Much like the 4K/Blu-ray combo pack, this release ships in a keepcase with poster-themed cover artwork (which yes, mimics Casablanca) and does not come with a slipcover or Digital Copy. Extras are similarly almost nil.

• Theatrical Trailer (2:25) - This black-and-white promotional piece can also be seen here.

The Good German Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Steven Soderbergh's box-office bomb The Good German was one of the director's most polarizing big-studio efforts, a lukewarm WWII noir/drama whose admittedly great visual gimmick is both its most interesting element and its biggest curse. (Perhaps the director saw Sin City a year earlier and assumed that audiences were still hungry for edgy black-and-white entertainment?) Even so, it's a film that has at least some merit besides for the visuals, as its performances are uniformly good and the original score by Thomas Newman fits like a glove. It's still a tough one to recommend to newcomers, but anyone intrigued by the subject matter or fans of Soderbergh may want to seek out the UHD combo pack or this long-overdue Blu-ray: the A/V merits are are at least solid enough to outweigh its lacking extras.