Blu-ray Movie Reviews

In the not-so-distant future, where people experience life through perfect surrogates controlled from the safety of their own homes, murder is a thing of the past. But when a college student linked to the creator of these replicants is killed, one FBI agent must re-enter reality and risk his life to unravel the mystery. In the battle of technology versus humanity, who can you trust?

Two movies I’ve watched this past week share the same themes; this one and Gamer. Both show a disturbing new world of people living through something else allowing them to stay safely tucked in at home while their alter-ego is out in the real world. Wait, isn’t that what forums and social networks do? Anyhow, this is like Facebook 3.0 where instead of you chatting it up online, a robot version of you is out living your life while you lay around experiencing it all through wires. Your robot self looks like a character out of the DNR heavy Blu-ray of Gangs of New York and of course everyone is doing what people REALLY want to do, party, have LOTS of sex and generally live uninhibited. But when people start dying in this perfect life, all goes to hell. While this film had LOTS of interesting ideas, the execution just didn’t draw me in like I was hoping. The film just seems to go along with the standard formula and the end lacks the impact that a good sci-fi film needs. The production is slick, but it doesn’t make up for the rather slow pace.

Anyone who does encoding work for Blu-ray needs to have a copy of this film. The filmmakers used some heavy digital noise reduction to give the surrogates a cleaned up look compared to their user. Bruce is a perfect example. All of the facial features are blended out making it obvious that he is not the REAL Bruce. So does that mean all those DNR heavy Blu-ray discs we see don’t feature the REAL actors?? Studios take note, if your movies look like this when they are not using Surrogate actors, SOMETHING IS WRONG!! Thankfully this time around things look exactly like they should. The Blu-ray image has great dimensionality and I loved the strong contrast and color palette. Fine detail is there when it’s supposed to be and the special effects blend in nicely within the film. The soundtrack is pretty engaging with lots of low bass and some interested sound design. Surrounds open up the soundstage and dialogue sounds natural. Overall a solid presentation!

Extras include a feature commentary with the director along with some insight into the making of the film, a music video and some deleted scenes.

While I love the premise of this one the execution was a bit disappointing. The film seemed a bit slow and not nearly as engaging as a good sci-fi thriller should be. The Blu-ray does look and sound great though so if you’re a fan it’s an easy rental recommendation.