6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 3.3 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.3 |
A group of recruits go through Advanced Infantry Training at Fort Polk, Louisiana's infamous Tigerland, last stop before Vietnam for tens of thousands of young men in 1971.
Starring: Colin Farrell, Matthew Davis (I), Clifton Collins Jr., Tom Guiry, Shea WhighamWar | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
French: DTS 5.1
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: DTS 5.1
Czech: Dolby Digital 2.0
Hungarian: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish DTS is Castilian, Spanish DD is Latin
English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Bonus View (PiP)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
I feel kind of sorry for Joel Schumacher. Yes, he’s the guy responsible for putting rubber nipples on Batman’s costume in 1997’s dreadful, camp Batman & Robin—an unforgivable offense, according to some fans—but I’ve come to see this as a clever act of subversion. (The movie is still terrible, though.) Warner Brothers pressured Schumacher to make a kid-friendly, Happy Meal-ready Batman film, and the openly gay director responded by sticking it to The Man, so to speak, homoeroticizing the relationship between the Caped Crusader and his codpiece-wearing sidekick. The movie was a massive failure, in the end, and Schumacher’s career has never fully recovered. He’s had a few minor hits since the Batman debacle— Phone Booth, Veronica Guerin, The Phantom of the Opera—but nothing that has rivaled his commercial success in the 1980s and early ‘90s. More recently, he’s turned his attentions toward smaller budget indie films, a shift that you see starting to take place in 2000’s underappreciated Tigerland, a Vietnam era war film that, visually and in terms of story, is quite different from any of his previous, glossier films.
Judging Tigerland's picture quality is a bit tricky, given how the film was shot. In order to obtain a more documentary-like look, Schumacher and cinematographer Matthew Libatique—most recently the DP on Black Swan—opted to use 16mm, which is much softer and grainier than 35mm. At the same time, they also put much of the film through a bleach bypass process, which strips it of strong color and gives it that gritty, desaturated quality that became really popular in war films post-Saving Private Ryan. Personally, I think this contradicts Schumacher's documentary-esque intentions. It would make more sense to either shoot straight 16mm without insane color toning—which would give a truer newsreel-type look—or shoot bleach bypassed 35mm. The combo of soft 16mm and stripped out color doesn't really work so well, and that's evidenced in the film's 1080p/AVC- encoded transfer, which—to put it frankly—is quite ugly. Truly fine detail is almost entirely absent, black levels are grayish even while they crush shadow detail, and the film's palette is a murky mixture of washed out greens and muddy browns. Still, you have to respect that this was how the film was shot, and that it's not likely to look much better. Where this transfer falters, however, is that it actively makes the film look worse by applying heavy edge enhancement to make up for the lack of resolve in the 16mm image. This leaves distracting haloing around hard outlines, which is especially noticeable in all scenes shot in the forest, as trunks, twigs, and branches are all awkwardly ringed. Furthermore, the natural appearance of film grain is inconsistent. There are scenes that are indeed heavy with chunky grain, and others where it's clear that at least some measure of DNR has been used to smooth everything out. Does Tigerland look better on Blu-ray than it did on DVD? Sure. But could it look better with a lighter touch on the post- processing? Absolutely.
The film's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track will be far less controversial, even if it doesn't deliver exactly what you'd expect from a "war" movie. Since the troops never actually make it to 'Nam here, there are no battle scenes or real firefights—sequences that typically feature loud, bombastic sound design in your average war film. There are a few mock-combat scenes that include machinegun fire popping off loudly in the rears, along with all the other subwoofer-heavy aural chaos of battle, but Tigerland is a surprisingly dialogue-driven experience. Know that going in and you'll have no problems with this well-mixed track. The surround speakers do have their moments of cross-channel intensity, but they're mostly used for place-establishing ambience: barrack sounds, barroom chatter, outdoorsy noises, etc. Nathan Larson's score also has a strong presence when it comes into play, and in general, the mix has a wide, clear dynamic range. Dialogue is always clean and easy to understand. The disc also includes several dub and subtitle options—see above for details.
Along with the commentary, screen tests, and TV spots that were included on the DVD edition of the film, Fox has surprisingly added three new Blu- ray exclusive bonus features—an interview with Schumacher, a look at the real-life Tigerland training base, and a conversation with the film's writer.
Obviously, if it's a choice between Tigerland or Platoon—the two Vietnam-era movies coming out on Blu-ray this week—Platoon is the far superior film. That said, Tigerland is one of Joel Schumacher's best efforts, and it's definitely worth revisiting; it's unusual among war movies in that it never takes its characters to actual war—the whole film is set on a training base—and it features fine performances from some then- unknown actors who you'll certainly recognize now. I have to give props to Fox for including some all-new special features in this Blu-ray rerelease, but I wish the studio had been less heavy handed with the film's edge enhancement-prone 1080p transfer. Is it worth the upgrade from DVD? Maybe, especially if you're interested in the new supplements, but don't expect to add Tigerland to the list of titles you use to demo your home theater system.
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