Blu-ray Movie Reviews

As waves of immigrants swell the population of New York, lawlessness and corruption thrive in lower Manhattan's Five Points section. After years of incarceration, young Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon returns seeking revenge against the rival gang leader who killed his father. But Amsterdam's personal vendetta becomes part of the gang warfare that erupts as he and his fellow Irishmen fight to carve a place for themselves in their newly adopted homeland.

This is the second release of this film on Blu-ray. The first was marred with one of the worst, and most controversial transfers to date. Fine detail had been scrubbed out resulting in a rather blurry mess. This new Award collection release does its best to remedy the issue but at the expense of having to purchase the film all over again. It is disheartening that a studio acknowledges an issue with a master but doesn’t give buyers a way to upgrade or at least get a discount for their fixed versions. Sony handled their mess up with “The Fifth Element” nicely by offering a trade in program. But so far Miramax and Paramount have not been so gracious.

This time around the video is considerably better than the previous Blu-ray release. But all is not perfect. There is still some noticeable ringing from time to time and fine detail is not up there with the best the format has to offer. Dimensionality is strong though and image depth is improved. The film does have a bit of a muted look to it and post processing still seems to lend a bit too much to the image. The soundtrack is largely the same as before and features some nice dynamics and an involving soundstage. The spatial design is captivating with great use of the surrounds and sub channel.

Extras are the same as before and give you a behind the scenes look at both the production and the historical significance of the early New York era. A music video and feature commentary with the director are also included.

I was disappointed that Miramax saw fit to fix the botched video yet not offer some kind of trade up program for the early adopters that bought the previous release. Studios should take responsibility for their mistakes and shouldn’t punish the consumers for their poor efforts. While this disc is an improvement in quality, I would only recommend it if you didn’t buy the previous version.