Blu-ray Review: Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Since the original Wall Street in 1987, the career of Oliver Stone has been on something of a rollercoaster, from the highs of JFK and Born on the Fourth of July to the almost crippling nadir of Alexander.* Since that epic landed with such a thud, Stone has made low-key efforts World Trade Center and W., neither of which made any great waves, and now he's apparently sunk even further, resorting to dredging up an old success to make a belated sequel. However, this is one delayed sequel where contemporary events warrant its production: the world of the Wall Street trader has transformed beyond all recognition over more than two decades, from the decadent boom of the 1990s to the recent and ongoing financial collapse.

It is during the unprecedented period of market turbulence in 2008 that the events of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps take place. The real-world relevance is one of the best things that the film has going for it, the glimpse (albeit Hollywood-tinted) behind the curtain of the economic downturn adding a good deal of intrigue and fascination. Hero/villain - depending on your viewpoint - of the original film, Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko, begins this film having just been released from prison, but he remains very much a supporting, even peripheral, character for most of the running time. The protagonist is Shia LaBeouf's Jake Moore, boyfriend of Winnie Gecko (Carey Mulligan), estranged daughter of Gordon. LaBeouf's largely endearing screen presence helps the fact that he is not granted a clearly defined storyline, which is indeed a problem with the film itself: while engaging with current economic affairs, a clear narrative is largely absent, leaving the film at times sluggish and meandering. Dialogue-heavy scenes come along in quick succession, which are often bewildering and lacking in the sort of wit that, say, Aaron Sorkin could bring to liven up jargon-strewn exchanges for the layman.

Money Never Sleeps is at its best in the first hour, when Stone seems to be getting his teeth into a subject with more passion than he has since the early '90s. The pacing is effective and the early scenes where LaBeouf and Douglas meet crackle with energy, particularly a dialogue scene on a subway train where tension is generated simply through line delivery and nifty editing. Also, Frank Langella as a weary old hand adds pathos to the early going. a fiery Josh Brolin proves to be a very good, believable antagonist, and the scenes in mahogany-panelled Federal Reserve boardrooms evoke the meetings of the Five Families in The Godfather. Later on, sadly, the film seems to lose steam somewhat, becoming more convoluted than intricate, leading to a finale that goes on about fifteen minutes past what could have been an effective, if cynical, end point. Still, the interplay between the characters remains entertaining.

*A film that is nowhere near as bad as its reputation, but I've already discussed that elsewhere.



Release Information
Country: UK / Region: B / Version: N/A / Discs: 1 / Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Presentation
Very good: a wholly satisfying, crisp image retaining a fine grain and deep contrast, and a surprisingly enveloping DTS-HD track to go with it.

Extras
It's evident that a lot of effort has gone into the selection of bonuses here, making the disc worth a punt despite reservations about the film. An hour's worth of featurettes cover the history of Wall Street itself, the original film, the boom and bust, and the making of this long-gestating sequel in sometimes fascinating depth. There's a whole heap of deleted scenes (30 mins), which give an interesting glimpse into the editorial process. The best part of the disc is Oliver Stone's superb commentary - another insightful, thoughtful discussion from the talkative director.



Summary
A rare thriller that manages to engage and excite without any violence, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps isn't quite a return to Oliver Stone's previous highs but it's an encouraging sign. Worth a watch, especially for those with a passing interest in investment banking, but it doesn't quite sustain its conviction to the end.

Blu-ray Review: Minority Report (2002)

The noughties was a slightly disappointing decade for maestro Steven Spielberg; after directing the then-highest-grossing-film-ever in each of the three previous decades (Jaws, E.T. and Jurassic Park), not to mention a string of critically lauded masterpieces, the 2000s saw him lose a little of his mojo. You could put it down simply to age, but the films he did make were never short of energy or filmmaking creativity. Perhaps he was attempting to depart from his image as a conjuror of cinematic fairground rides (an unfair billing even at the start of the decade, with World War 2 brace Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan under his belt). Minority Report was amongst the best of the decade's output for the legendary man: though still some way short of his best, it still contains more than enough excitement and invention to thrill all but the most jaded of cinemagoers.

An adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story (Blade Runner, Total Recall), Minority Report seems perhaps like an ill fit for Spielberg, and it was in fact star Tom Cruise who first brought the project to his director's attention, the pair having been intent on working together for some time (they would go on to make the underrated War of the Worlds too). The story of a near future - 2054 to be precise - where the crime of murder has been eradicated by three clairvoyant savants called Precogs, the film centres on Cruise's John Anderton, an officer in the Precrime Division, who is himself implicated in the future murder of a stranger. It's a neat conceit but one that takes a lot of explaining and exposition to fill in all the quirks, meaning that the film takes a good half hour to really get going.

Indeed, Spielberg's famous knack for precision pacing is slightly skewed here throughout, that sluggish start followed by a burst of exhilarating action (two showpiece sequences are consecutive), followed by another lull, before another superb set-piece (one word: Spyders) and an enjoyably clever, if not quite revelatory, finale. Fortunately this vision of the future is compelling and unique; elements of it manage to be plausible too, though the central concepts remain distinctly the realm of science fiction. Spielberg is assisted by his regular lenser Janusz Kaminski, who gives the film a layer of grain, washed out colours and a distinct blue tinge. It's not always what you'd call eye candy, but it is stylish.

Cruise is his usual intense self, and performs reliably well, though his character is based upon essentially one trait: the fact that his son disappeared from a public swimming pool some years earlier, leaving him estranged from his wife and now a dabbling drug user. Colin Farrell, still during the period when he was billed as the next superstar, basically fulfils the role of Mr. Exposition (he's the new guy who has to get everything explained to him). The most memorable performance is one we see little of for the first two thirds: Samantha Morton, as primary Precog Agatha, is spookily alien yet human, childlike but wiser than any of the other characters - a difficult set of contradictions that Morton pulls off with aplomb.

Indeed the film is a contradiction: a sci-fi thriller which aims for dark places but is at its best during the quality popcorn-munching action sequences, and whose quest for thematic depth and resonance is undermined by its director's reluctance to leave you at all depressed.



Release Information
Country: UK / Region: Free / Version: N/A / Discs: 1 / Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Presentation
This Blu-ray from Fox does not quite gleam as it might. The feature bitrate is a mere half of the Paramount US release, which houses its extras on a second disc. The Fox UK version crams all the same material onto one disc, including several featurettes in HD. Without personally having watched both, it's hard to judge quite how the added compression impacts picture quality, but the overall feeling is that the image is a little soft, with the heavy and deliberate grain sometimes obscuring rather than picking out detail. Still, the intended downcast look is rendered faithfully, and the audio track seems to be the full-fat version: no issues there.

Extras
An ample set, which adds to the already good 2-disc DVD supplements with several more newly produced ones. Being a Spielberg film, there is of course no commentary, but the sheer number of featurettes more than compensates. Everything is covered, from the Philip K. Dick origins to the CGI effects. The only negative is that despite some of the extras being newly assembled, none of them feature newly recorded interviews.



Summary
Lacking the most graceful or efficient storyline, Spielberg nevertheless manages to wrestle Minority Report into something occasionally thrilling and always interesting, with some trademark slick action.

Blu-ray Review: Ben-Hur (1959)

When you mention the term 'biblical epic', one film instantly leaps to mind above all others, despite Hollywood having produced numerous examples of the genre. That film is Ben-Hur, William Wyler's legendary tale of a Jewish prince who, freed from slavery in a Roman galley, battles his childhood friend - now Jerusalem's Roman consul - in a mammoth chariot race, meeting a certain carpenter from Nazareth along the way. Everything about Ben-Hur screams epic, from the pacing (slower than most films could get away with), to the scale, and even the poster design, where the title is seemingly chiselled out of rock, towering above human figures. Leading man Charlton Heston, the man whose very name has come to connote the epic, is a similarly towering presence in the film, his gravitas and authority overcoming any acting limitations. This is probably his finest performance, mastering a role that runs the gamut of emotions while also requiring immense physicality. (He spent months learning to drive a chariot himself.)

There's a good reason why Ben-Hur remains at the top of the pile amongst epics, because it's not only one of the most successful (its record-setting 11 Oscars remaining unbeaten, not to mention its box office haul): it's also one of the best. Only Spartacus, released a year later and motivated by Kirk Douglas losing out on the Ben-Hur role, challenges it amongst the sword 'n' sandal school. What makes it work on a level that, say, Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 The Ten Commandments fails to, is by treating the narrative as a human, character-driven story, rather than one where the epochal events drive the characters. Heston's Judah Ben-Hur feels like an active agent rather than a bystander. Anchoring the story in an intimate family struggle also engenders greater engagement with the protagonist plight, which is instrumental in holding the attention for three hours and forty minutes.

Of course, the film's most iconic sequence is the chariot race, and justifiably so. A brilliant combination of seamless scale and dynamic editing, it is this ferocious set-piece that elevates the film to the status of classic (and inspired George Lucas to imitate it in The Phantom Menace). It has been called the first modern action sequence, which may well be the case; with its superb construction, maintaining immense kineticism throughout and showcasing some jaw-dropping stunt work, other action sequences of the period pale in comparison. Just compare, say, the battles in Heston's next epic, the Spanish medieval adventure El Cid (1961): they're logistically impressive but dated and stodgy, which Ben-Hur's chariot race certainly is not.

While you would not call the rest of Ben-Hur modern, it did represent a clear step towards realism in the set design and costuming, which favours the naturalistic over gaudy Technicolor stylings. The lighting is also exemplary, Wyler content to bath swathes of his elaborate sets in deepest shadows, taking some inspiration from film noir. The pacing, on the other hand, is defiantly old-school; you could probably eliminate thirty minutes by just tightening most of the dialogue exchanges, without losing anything, and the middle section and the last hour or so after the chariot race do drag. But that was part of the deal with epics back in the day: the bigger the better, and they don't come much bigger than Ben-Hur.



 
Release Information
Country: US / Region: Free / Version: Fiftieth Anniversary Limited Edition / Discs: 3 / Distributor: Warner Bros.

Presentation
Ben-Hur has received an 8K restoration, one of the first of its kind, taking full advantage of the 65mm resolution to deliver a truly stunning image. There's almost no grain but DNR is nowhere to be found; this is entirely down to the large-format film stock. Detail is accordingly outstanding and colours shine through - just check out the reds of the Roman cloaks. The picture is stable throughout with not a speck of print damage or dirt having eluded the restorers. This is a grade-A job, and perhaps the best HD transfer of an older film yet seen. It really is like looking through a window at times. The only drawback is unavoidable - with such a wide aspect ratio (2.76:1) the black bars take up a lot of screen real estate.

There was less to work with in the sound department, the capabilities of 1950s recording equipment not quite equalling the visuals. Still, the 5.1 DTS-HD track is perfectly competent, giving Miklos Rosza's stirring score room to breathe; on the other hand, there's little depth or LFE.

Extras
This 3-disc set houses the film on two discs (to maintain the highest bitrate), divided by the intermission, while the third contains the extras. They consist of everything found on the 4-disc DVD, including two hour-long documentaries, the full 1925 silent film of Ben-Hur (even more impressive scale-wise than its remake), screen tests - including Leslie Nielsen! - and more. The documentaries are superb, one being a well-made Ted Turner-produced Making Of from the 1990s, the other a retrospective made for the 2005 DVD release. The commentary - mostly by film historian FX Feeney, but also with some input by the late Heston - is also present and correct.

These are further complimented for the Blu-ray by a brand new 80-minute documentary comprising home video footage shot by Heston's wife during the prolonged making of the film, also encompassing the actor's childhood, and with numerous interview contributors. This US release also contains a booklet featuring reproduced pages from the Heston's diary, which is truly fascinating and shows he was a highly intelligent man who thought deeply about his work. Finally, there's another book too, a large glossy photo book with numerous stills from the film and the production. (The UK release excludes these physical extras and the fancy packaging but is much cheaper - the choice is yours.)



Summary
Ben-Hur epitomises the Hollywood epic, and remains a stirring adventure. The chariot race is justifiably legendary; the rest of the film, sometimes overwrought and sluggish, slightly less so. It probably hasn't looked or sounded better since its premiere.

Blu-ray Review: The Princess and the Frog (2009)

This section is a reproduction of my original cinema review.

An unfortunate side-effect of Pixar's emergence onto the scene from 1995 onwards was the diminishing fortunes of the traditional hand-drawn animation. Of course, Hollywood being Hollywood, it was deemed that the decline in the box office revenues of traditional cartoons was due to the fact that the kids now wanted CG and nothing else, rather than the fact that many traditional 'toons of the late '90s and early 2000s were simply lacklustre films. Fittingly, it is Pixar's founder John Lasseter who has provided a voice of reason and overseen the rebirth of classic animation at the Mouse House, and The Princess and the Frog is the first progeny of his new creative direction.

Something that is quite readily apparent with the film is that despite Lasseter's involvement, the traditional Walt Disney format has not been "Pixarised" at all; Princess belongs completely within the realm of the musical fairytale, rather than the more postmodern and contemporary charms of the Lasseter school. It makes for a hugely refreshing change of pace. There's a character and magic to the film immediately, borne out of the evident loving care applied to every frame, and the clear commitment to make a film that rises above run-of-the-mill to sit alongside prior Disney classics, such as those produced in the early '90s renaissance. The Princess and the Frog achieves that goal in some style; it's a heartwarming, engrossing fable that both rejuvenates some of the old Disney staples and injects some original and unpredictable touches of its own.

The art design of the film is simply fantastic. The decision to set the tale in period New Orleans is a masterstroke, which both gives it an absolutely distinctive visual style and also influences composer Randy Newman's musical approach, which is heavily jazz-, ragtime- and gospel-based. Beginning with a prologue with main character Tiana as a young girl, which illustrates her less than privileged upbringing in a subtle and endearing way. Soon the film skips a number of years to meet Tiana in young adulthood. She's working as a lowly waitress but harbours a dream, inspired by her late father, to own her own restaurant. It's a surprisingly mature beginning, and while it takes some time for this set-up to transition into a story about her meeting an eastern prince who has been transformed into a frog by a sinister voodoo practitioner, then finding herself transformed into a frog too, the way it is handled - with good humour, appealing songs and that beautiful artwork - means that it's captivating from the start.

If the film's subsequent detour into a trek through the bayou accompanied by a trumpet-playing crocodile and a Cajun firefly feels like a concession to the kiddies, the tonal shift is relatively seamless, and the anthropomorphised animal characters are more than simple comic relief. Less well defined is the film's villain Dr. Facilier, the aforementioned voodoo conjuror, whose insidious plot is never made particularly clear, and the character himself is unmemorable. That's not the fault of the voice actor, Keith David, however, and indeed the whole cast, mercifully free of incongruous but attention-grabbing star names, acquit themselves very well indeed, from Anika Noni Rose's feisty but vulnerable heroine (Disney's first black protagonist, a fact which is subtly referenced but never shoved down our throats) to Jim Cummings as the firefly with the thick bayou accent.

Although, as a fairytale, the ultimate outcome of the plot is a foregone conclusion, it doesn't restrict the entertainment value at all, and there are a couple of twists that even jaded viewers may not see coming. There's a joie de vivre present throughout that makes the film simply a pleasure to watch.



Release Information
Country: UK / Region: Free / Version: Triple Play / Discs: 3 (1 BD/1 DVD/1 Digital Copy) / Distributor: Disney

Presentation
The exquisite artistry of Princess' recreation of New Orleans was always going to shine on Blu-ray, and indeed it is magnificent: the colours! The detail! The clarity! (And not a hint of aliasing or banding, as can be a problem with animation in HD.) Equally sublime is the audio, the opening number, "Down in New Orleans", providing a perfect showcase - you can make out the individual instruments in Randy Newman's orchestra.

In short, Disney + animation + Blu-ray = audio-visual perfection.

Extras
There's not a huge amount here, but it is wonderfully good-natured and passionate. The most substantial is a 20-minute Making Of and a jovial commentary; thankfully there are few exclusively kiddie extras like games that they're never going to play. Naturally, there's much discussion of this being the rebirth of Disney hand-drawn animation; sadly, further more recent showpieces for the technique have been conspicous by their absence.



Summary
The CG-animation bandwagon has long been overcrowded. The Princess and the Frog is a breath of fresh air, full of vitality, charm and artistry - reminding us exactly what made Disney animation so beloved in the first place.

Blu-ray Review: The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

I completely agree with Joel's review of The Adjustment Bureau on its theatrical release, no rather than reiterate similar points I'm reproducing his review here with salient Blu-ray specific comments below.

The Adjustment Bureau, with its morose grey tones, quick-paced chase scenes and pseudo-spiritual focus, is doomed to be compared with Christopher Nolan's Inception, though the plot actually has little in common with 2010's extravaganza. Instead of a staid, defeated Leonardo DiCaprio, we have Matt Damon, his co-star from The Departed, as David, a bullish, up-and-coming politician, who stumbles onto the knowledge that his entire life has been engineered by a group of men who claim to work for someone called The Chairman. They alert him that the big man's 'Plan' entails that he not hook up with a feisty ballerina (the wonderful Emily Blunt) which would derail him from his career and ruin hers.

From the get-go, it's made clear who/what The Chairman is, as well as his workers. These are bureaucrats from the Other Side, who fascinatingly seem to have the same type of business hierarchy as a large government office and are very fond of snappy fedora hats. It's a strange, slightly silly conceit, but perhaps that's what makes it brilliant. (It also gives an excuse to quote perhaps the most unintentionally hilarious line of the year: "The most important thing to remember is that everyone wearing a hat is a threat!")

Director George Nolfi is clever not pretending that Philip K. Dick's source material isn't a little silly, and he actually embraces it. Consequently the chase scenes, with Damon being followed by ten men in sharp suits, flips between being a charming Hitchcock pastiche and actually a little frightening. Indeed, the director isn't afraid of fun - something Christopher Nolan could maybe take a lesson from.

Damon and Blunt display some of the best chemistry on-screen you are likely to see post-Golden Age Hollywood. Though their relationship is based on only three chance meetings, their slow-burning yet jovial banter makes it seem credible that they would be willing to take on God to keep it intact. John Slattery (famous for portraying silver fox Roger Sterling in Mad Men) is also terrific as a cosmic middle manager. And as David's case worker, Anthony Mackie takes what could be a small, exposition-heavy character, and turns him into a melancholic, disillusioned soul with every turn of phrase.

The man at the helm of the project, first-time director and long-time screenwriter, Nolfi makes more than a solid debut behind the camera and the whole film is smoothly shot, with numerous moments of standout cinematography. Considering where the film is based (New York), and the events that occur, there isn't a huge amount of scope to produce impressive visuals, and as such Nolfi should be very satisfied with his input. One aspect that works well is the handling of the Bureau's agents' supernatural movements. They have the ability to alter the location that appears when they step through a door, thus being able to create portals to practically anywhere they like; this is handled very slickly and never appears clunky.

Nolfi also understands that this is an entertainment commodity and he never tries to make bold political and ideological statements, perhaps barring the one time Damon refers to the people "running the country" as "idiots". The correct way to approach The Adjustment Bureau is not to put much serious thought into it. This is not the new Blade Runner; it is a long way from a thought-provoking sci-fi thriller of that particular depth although the film offers many interpretations regarding predestination. Rather, it is a romance story, juxtaposed with elements of sci-fi.

The thematic impulse behind The Adjustment Bureau is a familiar one, that true love is worth more than anything else this life has to offer. The keys to Nolfi putting it over effectively in this real world but quasi-sci-fi context are his great success in making the connection between Damon and Blunt so convincing and worth fighting for.



Release Information
Country: UK / Region: Free / Version: Triple Play Steelbook / Discs: 3 (1 BD/1 DVD/1 Digital Copy) / Distributor: Universal

Presentation
The Adjustment Bureau doesn’t come with quite the sort of slick, polished transfer we’re now used to with new releases. In spots it’s quite soft detail-wise, but this varies quite a lot (some close-ups, for example, look exceptional). There’s a fair amount of grain but it looks inherent in the film stock, and a high bitrate means that compression artefacts, such as undue noise or blocking, are never in evidence. The colour scheme is the most impressive part – the rich palette of colours (especially blues) in John Toll’s cinematography shines through, showing off the film’s unusually extensive New York location shooting magnificently. The soundtrack is commendably immersive at times, though the refreshing lack of bombast means it’s never a showstopper in terms of depth or bass response.

Extras
Meagre, unfortunately. First time director George Nolfi (writer of Ocean’s Twelve and The Bourne Ultimatum) badly needs a partner on the commentary, as his delivery is not the most confident or engaging, despite the fact that he’s evidently passionate about the project. The Interactive Map of New York sounds nifty, but its execution is limited and clunky: choose various story locations on a Google Earth map, watch a (very brief) behind the scenes clip, and ‘travel’ through the door to wherever it leads, like the bureau do in the film. The three remaining featurettes are too short, adding up to only 20 minutes or so; disappointing considering what you do see is interesting.



Summary
Lightness of touch is not what one expects in fictional portrayals of monolithic entities bent on world domination, so the subtle tone George Nolfi maintains here represents something fresh and welcome. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are sublime.

Blu-ray Review: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) / Das Boot (1981) / The Guns of Navarone (1961)

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have released a range of older films this year on Blu-ray with similar sleeve designs. While the collection has no specific name, its intention is clearly collate the best films of Sony’s back catalogue (i.e. Columbia) and release them in the best possible standard. Three of these – The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Das Boot (1981), and The Guns of Navarone (1961), numbered 2, 8 and 9 in the range respectively – are set in World War 2 and form a brilliant trio of war classics, so it only seemed natural to review them together.

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a great war film, a great prison film, a great adventure movie and a great men on a mission film. It adds up to an absolute masterpiece. Its 160 minute runtime may initially seem excessive, but turns out to be fully justified: there’s just so much to enjoy here in a film that just keeps on giving, and the perfectly judged length allows for immense exploration of character, as well as some unbeatable stretches of incredible suspense. The first act is relatively low key: a group of British prisoners of war are marched into their Japanese internment camp deep in the Thai jungle, and a battle of wills ensues between British Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness, never better) and his Japanese oppressor Saito (Sessue Hayakawa, wonderful) over whether the officers will be forced to do manual labour, in defiance of the Geneva convention. The manual labour in question is, of course, the famous bridge. As the verbal battle plays out, an American PoW (William Holden) manages to escape, and before long he’s roped into returning to the camp to blow up the newly built bridge with a squad of commandos.

As the film divides its attention between the commando expedition and the building of the bridge, each is equally gripping. Apparently the latter was an addition at the behest of the producer, who felt the bridge building side of the story would not provide enough thrills, but Lean never shows any disinterest in the less cerebral side of the story. The thrills and incredible suspense of the jungle trek – one sequence in particular, where thousands of bats are disturbed by gunshots and cast shadows over a tense chase, is utter genius – are counterpointed by the fascinating character face-off on the bridge. Guinness’ character is curious, and hard to really pin down – is he just extremely patriotic, simply wanting to show the best of British engineering skills? Or is he a collaborator, willingly helping out his captors? The film never answers this fundamental quandary, leaving its legendary ending open to two divergent interpretations. And what an ending it is: a forty-five minute sustained build of suspense that’s practically unrivalled, reaching an almost unbearable crescendo.

The Guns of Navarone feels like a natural follow-up to Kwai, and was surely designed to capitalise on the earlier film’s success (which it did, earning a Best Picture nomination itself and very healthy box office). The films share a screenwriter, Carl Foreman, which partly explains certain similarities, but Navarone is a more straightforward affair. It’s a pure men on a mission film; indeed probably the very apotheosis of the subgenre – driven by star power (Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn) and a simple plot: a group of British special forces have to blow up a massive Nazi gun emplacement on a Greek island. That’s not to say, though, that it has more in common than mindless modern blockbusters that its precursor Kwai - this is an almost equally satisfying, enjoyable and wholly engrossing affair.

Like Kwai, Navarone takes its time getting anywhere, but never feels indulgently slow. The extra length simply adds to the character interaction and suspense. In fact, the mission itself is underway in the film sooner than you might expect, soon running into difficulties in a superbly realised storm sequence. Navarone never stops throwing complications in the way of the heroes, in the form of double crosses, injuries, captures and other hiccups, but that’s not at the expense of the characters’ integrity – it just amplifies how tough their mission is. The setting of the fictional Greek island (the film was shot on location in Rhodes) adds colour and novelty, and makes for some great set pieces. If the finale feels like a slight anticlimax, that’s made up for by the sheer entertainment value of the whole adventure.

Das Boot takes another tack entirely. It's a World War 2 film starring Germans, made by Germans, and telling the German side of the story. While not unique in that respect, it remains the pinnacle of the films that have attempted to expose what it was like to be on Hitler's side. Following exclusively the experience of a U-boat crew on an Atlantic mission, what Das Boot does so brilliantly is humanise these men: they were just as scared as the Allies, and apparently few of them were blindly loyal to their Fuhrer. There's a world-weariness embodied in the boat's captain, played by Jurgen Prochnow, that captures the futility that must have been sensed by the crew; they were fighting a war that many of them had little stake in, and little hope of surviving. Perhaps there's an air of apologetic German revisionism, but Das Boot feels authentic down to the last rivet.

Director Wolfgang Petersen announced himself on the world stage here, making use of the new Steadicam technology to roam the cramped confines of the submarine with unheard of freedom and realism. Never before or even since has a film so effectively conveyed the claustrophobia and exhaustion that such an environment must engender, and also the nerve-shredding terror of coming under attack while stuck in the ocean depths. From a British perspective U-boats have always been seen as invisible instruments of death that mercilessly attacked vital trade routes, but Das Boot exposes that they were far from invincible, opening with a sobering text telling us that 30,000 of the 40,000 U-boat crewmen in the war died before it ended. Despite the film's harrowing message, though, it's also an extraordinarily thrilling adventure, its three and a half hours (in this Director's Cut) positively sailing by in a blur of edge-of-seat intensity.



Release Information
Country: UK / Region: Free / Version: N/A / Discs: 1 (Kwai and Navarone); 2 (Das Boot) / Distributor: Sony

Presentation
Both Kwai and Navarone have received new 4K restorations, and the results are splendid. In Kwai the details of faces and the leaves of the jungle spring to life with great contrast and definition. Its optical dissolves are hazy, however, momentarily disrupting the experience, but nothing could be done there. Navarone looks even better, with great clarity for an older title, only some of its model effects marginally wilting under the scrutiny. Both retain a fine and entirely beneficial grain structure. They also each receive a DTS-HD 5.1 mix, both of which sound perfectly satisfactory but only erratically provide much impact or weight, with limited use of the surround channels.

Das Boot is a slightly different beast. A documentary on its second disc explains that its negative was in dire shape due to flooding, so this is not a new master; it’s probably the same one used for the construction of the Director’s Cut in 1997. Accordingly, detail is relatively weak, with murky shadows and soft edges. There’s not much grain, too, which suggests possible DNR. Its visual shortcomings may also stem from its origins as a relatively low-budget production, though the set design is exemplary. It looks fine, but not great. The soundtrack was completely remixed and redone in 5.1 for the Director’s Cut (even all-new ambient effects were created), and it’s very good, though does not quite make maximum use of the surround sound potential of a submarine-set film; the soundfield isn’t very densely detailed, but directionality is often well utilised.

Extras
Kwai and Navarone are single disc sets but with their extras being mostly presented in SD disc space becomes less of a concern. Navarone, in particular, comes with a handsome array, including multiple commentaries, documentaries and featurettes, but nothing actually new. A nice touch is that you can watch the film with or without its roadshow intermission. The main attraction among Kwai's extras, meanwhile, is a truly excellent hour-long documentary, which is also accompanied by several archival featurettes and an appreciation by John Milius. There's sadly no commentary, but there is a 'picture-in-graphics' track - basically a simple text-based trivia track, which isn't particularly enticing.

Das Boot, its mammoth runtime occupying the whole of one disc, gets a second disc of extras, many new and in HD too. (The first disc features the very good director's commentary from the original DVD.) Several retrospective docs get together some of the participants to look back at the making of what has come to be a seminal film. Amongst the highlights are a featurette on assembling the Director's Cut, and a visit to the studio where the film was shot; it's clear how personal the film is to Petersen (significantly more personal, you'd have to say, than any of his Hollywood efforts). Strangely, the theatrical cut is nowhere to be found, despite it being housed on the second disc of the otherwise identical US Blu-ray release, but it's no great loss.



Summary
Three brilliant films, with equally powerful - but quite different - impact. The masterful Kwai is the true standout here, but Das Boot is also extraordinary, and Navarone is as good a Boys' Own adventure as you're likely to see. Sony's Blu-ray releases do them all justice; Kwai's and Navarone's meticulous restorations are sights to behold and Das Boot's bonus material makes up for its (perhaps unavoidable) visual shortcomings.

The Bridge on the River Kwai:


The Guns of Navarone:


Das Boot: