The Rolling Stones: Olé Olé Olé! A Trip Across Latin America Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

The Rolling Stones: Olé Olé Olé! A Trip Across Latin America Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 26, 2017

Several years ago my wife, sons and I were visiting London and were staying at a hotel virtually around the corner from Hyde Park. We were so involved in regular day to day tourist activities that we were only tangentially aware of a lot of activity in the park, including various construction activities and a kind of funny (given the Brits’ emphasis on keeping calm and carrying on) manic tendency on the part of some people hanging around the park. It turned out the Rolling Stones were preparing to give a live performance in this stunningly gorgeous urban paradise, the same site as their now legendary 1969 concert in the wake of Brian Jones’ death. The 2013 performance was immortalized in The Rolling Stones: Sweet Summer Sun - Hyde Park Live, a concert video that proved the boys were still energetic if occasionally at least a little on the ragged side. Without trying to sound too churlish, it’s obvious that none of the Rolling Stones are what you’d exactly call spring chickens, but kind of like that Energizer bunny, they just keep going, and Olé Olé Olé documents the Stones’ 2016 tour of Latin America, a journey which took them to a number of South American countries, including Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Mexico, but which is perhaps most notable for its stop in the once isolated and sequestered island of Cuba, a performance which has been separately memorialized with The Rolling Stones: Havana Moon.

Both The Rolling Stones: Sweet Summer Sun - Hyde Park Live and The Rolling Stones: Havana Moon were efficiently directed by Paul Dugdale, and Dugdale brings his same up close and personal approach to Olé Olé Olé, with the expected amount of live performance material, but also a perhaps unexpected and welcome emphasis on historical context and some actually kind of touching backstage and/or candid content. Whatever ups and down the Stones have experienced in their decades together as a performing unit don’t seem to have materially affected the sense of brotherhood between them, and there’s kind of a “survivors” ambience underlying some of their interactions, as if they’re quietly saying to each other, “Hey, we made it through all of that, so this is not going to be any kind of problem.”

Olé Olé Olé repeatedly teases the Havana concert, with a series of interstitial title cards announcing a countdown of sorts, with attendant snippets of life in the colorful if sometimes dilapidated looking urban center, and there’s little doubt that the Cuba concert is the emotional high point of the film, though that said, a probably more detailed accounting of the actual performance is given in Havana Moon. Olé Olé Olé does spend a considerable amount of time documenting the immense logistical challenges the Stones’ team faces whenever they undertake a concert tour, with this particular outing seeming to present more than its fair share of obstacles to overcome.

What’s really unexpectedly interesting about the non performance related aspect of the documentary, though, is its rather careful if generalist overview of some of the sociopolitical environments in Latin America which actually led to first the oppression of rock music, and then (not to state the obvious) a pent up desire to be able to hear it out in the open. That may explain part of the almost rapturous response the Stones receive throughout the tour, probably (again) most noticeably in Havana, where there’s a near riot once admittance is granted to the huge outdoor venue. Interspersed with this kind of information are some more intimate moments with the guys themselves, all of whom seem to be in fine fettle and actually kind of almost whimsically bemused to be doing this at their ages. There are some passing references to frictions in the past (and maybe— just maybe—in the present), but like a couple that has been married for decades and which has learned to live with each other, there’s a level of calm tolerance on display that’s really ingratiating.

It’s perhaps just a little odd that Havana Moon was released first on Blu-ray, since it’s the more (geographically) focused of the two documentaries, and obviously spends the bulk of its time in what is the unquestioned emotional focus of Olé Olé Olé. That said, this particular documentary has more of the nuts and bolts of the tour as well as some really wonderful intimate moments with a bunch of guys who continue to gather little if any moss.

The Rolling Stones: Olé Olé Olé! A Trip Across Latin America Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Rolling Stones: Olé Olé Olé! A Trip Across Latin America is pressented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 2.40:1. The look of this transfer is very much in line with what I described in our The Rolling Stones: Havana Moon Blu-ray review, which only makes sense since the footage was caught during the same tour by the same director and (presumably) crew. While some of the urban settings are a bit on the decrepit side (or at least may seem so to some "northerners"), the colors are quite vivid and incredibly evocative. Imagery is sharply defined in close-ups, whether backstage, in "confessionals", and (to a certain extent) in the performances snippets, though some of these suffer from dark surroundings and some inconsistent contrast. There are a couple of very brief moments of image instability, assumedly from the interlaced presentation, on elements like parallel lines on some of the metal roofs that are shown. Some moments are very grainy and fuzzy looking (see screenshot 10), either due to being stock footage or tweaked to look like it, and there are some minor compression issues that accrue in darker moments, but generally speaking this is a sharp and precise looking transfer which should please Stones fans.

The Rolling Stones: Olé Olé Olé! A Trip Across Latin America Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Rolling Stones: Olé Olé Olé! A Trip Across Latin America features LPCM 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks. Because this is more of a talking heads enterprise than an outright concert video (though there are of course musical performances, at least in dribs and drabs), the difference between these two tracks is perhaps not as pronounced as with a traditional concert video. That said, the surround track certainly opens up the soundstage for even non-musical elements like the hubbub in the Los Angeles rehearsal studio or some of the outdoor sequences in Cuba and other locales where ambient environmental sounds come into play. As I discussed in the The Rolling Stones: Havana Moon Blu-ray review, this release suffers from the same overwhelming audience noise in some of the live performance footage, to the point that the band gets somewhat buried at times. That said, fidelity is fine and there is no damage of any kind to report.

The Rolling Stones: Olé Olé Olé! A Trip Across Latin America Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Live (1080i; 53:33) contains the following songs from the following locations:

  Out of Control (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

  Paint It Black (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

  Honky Tonk Women (Sao Paulo, Brazil)

  Sympathy for the Devil (Sao Paulo, Brazil)

  You Got the Silver (Lima, Peru)

  Midnight Rambler (Lima, Peru)

  Miss You (Lima, Peru)

Additionally, a CD sized insert booklet has reproductions of the posters utilized for the tour.

The Rolling Stones: Olé Olé Olé! A Trip Across Latin America Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is an unusually compelling piece which should certainly be enjoyed by any and all Rolling Stones fans, but which may well have a broader appeal to those with an interest in South America and its at times circumspect flirtation with rock 'n' roll. The documentary has good performance footage, but the really emotionally affecting content has to do more with the interplay between the band members and (especially) the concert in Cuba. Technical merits are generally strong, and The Rolling Stones: Olé Olé Olé! A Trip Across Latin America comes Highly recommended.