Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Yesterday's Enemy Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman December 22, 2020

Yesterday's Enemy is currently available in the twenty film Hammer Ultimate Collection.

The film follows a British unit, led by Captain Langford (Stanley Baker), that stumbles upon a plan for a Japanese attack. They must employ unorthodox -- an inhumane -- methods of extracting information from innocent civilians if they are to ward off a major enemy offensive.

Hammer’s departures from Horror have been modestly successful. Films like Cash on Demand and The Camp on Blood Island have been amongst the finest included in the Hammer Ultimate Collection, and this one is of a high narrative quality, too. While it’s mostly a straightforward War film in its technical construction, plotting, gunplay, and the like, it does reveal the stress, brutality, and human cost of war quite effectively, exemplified by a sequence when the men quarrel over committing blatant war crimes -- executing innocent civilians -- to prove a point, extract necessary information, and ensure a vital component in their mission to reveal the details of a secret map and ensuing Japanese military action. Acting is solid if not forgettable and the production design feels authentic to the time and setting.

Yesterday's Enemy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Yesterday's Enemy arrives on Blu-ray from Mill Creek with a fairly good 1080p picture presentation. Light grain is intact for the duration. Along with relatively sharp details and the widescreen aspect ratio, there's a pleasant film-quality look to the picture that plays very well at normal viewing distances. The picture never can find the super-sharp definition to the jungle environment but faces and uniforms and dwellings, particularly as seen in relative close-up, showcase commendable definition to pores, sweat, dirt, and other signs of combat fatigue. The grayscale is effective, offering solid transitional tones and nuance through the middle. Whites are above creamy but less than pure while blacks mostly favor depth rather than lightness. The picture shows a handful of speckles and mild compression issues but despite a few drawbacks this is a rather nice image in total that supports the material quite well.

Yesterday's Enemy Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As the film begins, the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack sounds very hollow and mechanical even as the action takes place with soldiers wading through waist-deep water and natural ambience surrounding them. There's a hard edge, almost metallic quality to the sound – even chirping birds and insect song – and the lack of spacing beyond a cramped front-middle imaged area further disappoints. Clarity strengthens beyond the open, however, to yield a crude but effective listen that remains the property of the center imaged area but offers a bit more definition as it's required. This is perhaps most notable with gunfire. While shots are not going to send listeners scrambling for hearing protection or ducking off the couch because it sounds like bullets are flying all over the listening area, there's at least a fundamentally sound baseline definition to the barrage of shots that help bring some semblance of accuracy to the presentation, cramped as it may be. The track offers few other sounds of note. Atmosphere proves slightly more polished as the film pushes forward though the lack of multichannel engagement limits the effectiveness to environmental definition, not recreation or immersion. Dialogue, which benefits from the strict front-center placement, is adequately clear for the duration.

Yesterday's Enemy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unfortunately, this Blu-ray release of Yesterday's Enemy, as it ships in the Hammer Ultimate Collection, contains no supplemental content.

Yesterday's Enemy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The film is difficult to watch, not because it's poorly made but because it's purposefully effective. It's emotionally unsettling and brutal. It shows the raw demands of war and the moral conflicts that rise from it, born of both the emotional burdens and the physical challenges. The film effectively measures how the process wounds the soul and destroys lives. It's an effective anti war picture, lacking the polish of the genre's best but excelling through brute emotional force rather than filmic finesse, though to be sure the technical elements are fine. Mill Creek's Blu-ray is disappointingly featureless. The 1080p video presentation is of a solid, film-like quality while the lossless two channel audio track demonstrates a capable, if not scrunched, listen that improves on a foreboding opening salvo of sonic dysfunction. Recommended.