7.9 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
As he plans his next job, career thief Doug MacRay tries to balance his feelings for a bank manager connected to one of his earlier heists, while trying to stay one step ahead of the FBI agent looking to bring down him and his crew.
Starring: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake LivelyCrime | 100% |
Thriller | 99% |
Action | 78% |
Heist | 37% |
Drama | 23% |
Video codec: HEVC / H.265
Video resolution: 4K (2160p)
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 kbps)
French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Italian: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Russian: Dolby Digital 5.1
Thai: Dolby Digital 5.1
Turkish: Dolby Digital 5.1
English DD=audio descriptive; Spanish=Latin & Castillian
English, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
UV digital copy
BD-Live
4K Ultra HD
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
As Warner prepares for the release of Ben Affleck's latest directorial effort, Live
by
Night, the studio has dusted off Affleck's two previous efforts as writer/director/star for 4K treatment:
Argo, the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 2012;
and the 2010 heist thriller, The Town. Both films have been previously issued on Blu-ray in multiple editions and cuts, but
Warner has limited its
UHD treatment of both features to their theatrical versions, thereby prompting substantial (and, frankly,
justified) grumbling among the 4K crowd. In the case of The Town, however, the new disc offers
more of an upgrade than expected, primarily because of the film's peculiar history on Blu-ray.
The Town's original 2010 Blu-ray contained both
the 125-minute theatrical cut and an extended
version, with twenty-five minutes of added scenes, on a single disc. To the consternation of many
technically minded Blu-ray fans, both versions were encoded in toto, rather than utilizing
seamless branching. The result was over five hours of movie being crunched onto one BD-50
with average bitrates in the mid-teens. My colleague Kenneth Brown concluded that, despite the
low rates, both versions of The Town looked remarkably good.
In 2012, Warner re-released The Town in an Ultimate
Collector's Edition containing the original
two-version Blu-ray, plus an entirely new disc featuring the extended edition with an alternate
ending. With only one cut on the second disc, Warner's encoding achieved a more respectable
bitrate of almost 26 Mbps. Ken's review compared this more
generous encode to the original, concluding that it was "better . . . but honestly, not that much better". He specifically noted a
"more refined" grain field and less artifacting. But those improvements were limited to the
extended edition (plus alternate ending). The version released to theaters has never received an
improved encode—until now.
Screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc. Watch for 4K screenshots at a later date.
Note: The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc. Watch for 4K
screenshots at a later date.
The Town's theatrical cut receives an upgrade on Warner's 2160p, HEVC/H.265-encoded UHD.
The image features the same chilly blues, deep blacks and natural skintones as the Blu-ray,
complete with the occasional flash of bright colors for contrast, like the red trim on MacRay's
jacket or the reddish-orange prison jumpsuit worn by his father. Textures and fine detail are even
more finely rendered on the UHD than on the Blu-ray, whether it's the pores and irregularities on
the faces of MacCray and his crew, the individual strands of Claire Keesey's (Rebecca Hall)
black hair or the incessant five o'clock (and sometimes ten o'clock) shadow on the face of
dogged FBI Agent Frawley (Jon Hamm). The same traces of the original photography on film noted
in Ken's review remain, but the occasional soft shot looks less soft now, aided by enhanced
contrast and detail.
Now, since The Town was finished on a digital intermediate at 2K, the new disc presents the
same riddle as the UHD of I Am
Legend: To what extent are the visible improvements a
function of 4K up-conversion and HDR encoding, as opposed to superior authoring with a new
codec, a more generous allotment of digital real estate and no high frequency filtering to facilitate
compression? A deeper analysis of the 4K disc's encoding will have to await the availability of
UHD computer drives and appropriate analytical software, but even then it may well be
impossible to determine the exact cause of the improvements with any certainty. In the
meantime, the enhancements offered by the UHD of The Town's theatrical cut are visible on the
screen for all to see.
A final note, which I am borrowing from one of my esteemed colleagues: I'd caution against any comparison of my scores on this release with scores
of
the previous Blu-rays. There's no guarantee I would have scored those discs the same way Ken did, and conversely Ken might very well have
scored this release differently than I have.
[Viewed on a system calibrated using a Klein K10-A Colorimeter with a custom profile created with a Colorimetry Research CR250
Spectraradiometer, powered by SpectraCal CalMAN 2016 5.7, using the Samsung Reference 2016 UHD HDR Blu-ray test disc authored by Florian
Friedrich from AV Top in Munich, Germany. Calibration performed by Kevin Miller of ISFTV.]
The UHD of The Town features the same lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 track reviewed here.
A copy of the 2010 Blu-ray is included, with all of the extras described in the previous review. The UHD also features the commentary for the theatrical cut.
I happen to think that, despite the inherent interest of the additional and alternate scenes in The
Town's expanded cuts, the theatrical version is the best: swift, brutal and relentless in its forward
motion, all while effectively maintaining a hold on the emotional lives of its central characters.
While it would have been preferable to have all three versions remastered in 4K, the upgrade of
the theatrical cut offered by this UHD iteration is significant enough to make it an easy
recommendation.
Extended Cut
2010
Movie-Only
2010
Ultimate Collector’s Edition
2010
Extended Cut with Alternate Ending
2010
Extended Cut; Single Disc; Ultra Violet
2010
2010
2010
Extended Cut
2010
Extended Cut
2010
2010
Extended Cut; Single Disc
2010
2010
2012
Limited Edition
1991
Director's Definitive Edition | Ultimate Collector's Edition
1995
1972
2009
Extended Edition
2011
2013
2005
2005
2016
2010
2001
2008
2011
2009
2012
1997
The Dirty Harry Collection
1976
4K Restoration
1998