Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Perception: Our day-in, day-out world is real. Reality: That world is a hoax, an elaborate deception spun by all-powerful machines of artificial intelligence that control us. Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne lead the fight to free humankind in the see-and-see-again cyberthriller written and directed by the Wachowski brothers.

I’m surprised I missed this one when it was initially released. This is a tougher relationship film that doesn’t pull a lot of punches and tends to deal with the tougher decisions and mistakes people make in love. The film follows several characters through different situations and shows that everything isn’t as peachy as movies typically make you think. The performances are quite strong and I liked the approach offered here even if I didn’t always agree with the decisions the characters made. A great relationship film, but not quite a date movie.

Dreamworks delivers a good transfer, but this one falls a bit short of the better catalog titles I’ve reviewed lately. The image has a bit of a softer look and the anamorphic lens used doesn’t do it any real favors. Fine object detail is a bit smoothed over and the image lacks the dimensionality of some of the better Blu-ray releases out there. Colors still look quite good though and I liked the image’s vibrancy and punch. Contrast levels are strong and do their best at providing depth, which is pretty fair throughout the film.

The Dolby TrueHD soundtrack is the typical blend of pop songs and moody scoring and doesn’t really do much in the sound design department. The track is fairly open spatially but I rarely heard much from the surrounds. I did notice some strange variations in the noise floor during dialogue which was a tad distracting, but this only happened on a few occasions during the film.

Dreamworks provides some decent supplements for this release including two audio commentaries and a few different looks at the making of the film and the actor’s favorite parts of the film. You also get some deleted scenes and a music video from the film’s soundtrack.

This was a nice break from the typical relationship film. I like the performances and the themes overall and the A/V presentation wasn’t too bad. Worth a rental for fans of the genre.