Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Bruce Willis stars as David Dunn, the sole survivor of a horrific train accident who escaped not only with his life, but without any injuries to speak of. Dunn's survival prompts a visit from Elijah Prince (Samuel L. Jackson), a crazed man who believes that David possesses superhuman strength and is a comic-book hero come to life.

If you can buy into the premise, you will get more out of this film than I did. I have never been a fan of comic books, so I had a hard time getting into the story. The acting was good, especially from Willis and Jackson, and I can appreciate the cinematography, but I found the story somewhat boring and predictable.

The movie is presented with a high-bitrate AVC encode in the theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1, but it isn't the best I have seen from Disney. It looks dull with no real depth to the picture, due in part to the bland earth-tone color palette. Shadow detail is very good, but the fine detail is average at best, with many scenes looking soft. I saw some film grain, although it was never too intrusive, and there appeared to be some minor print damage as well as some video noise. The Blu-ray version is certainly an improvement over what you will find on the DVD, but this isn't one of the best HD presentations from Disney.

The audio is presented in an uncompressed PCM 5.1-channel soundtrack (4.6Mbps) with excellent dynamics. Dialog is always intelligible, the surround channels add depth, and the LFE channel shakes the room when needed. My only gripe with the audio is what seems to be an encoding error—at the 8:30 mark, the right-surround channel has some static-like noise that lasts about two seconds. I played this sequence several times and heard the same sound each time. The same type of noise appears at the 1:28:21 mark, this time from the center speaker. These two audio issues are the only blemishes in an otherwise excellent audio track.

The bonus features offer nothing new on Blu-ray that isn't on the earlier DVD release. Included are seven deleted scenes with commentary, a "making of" featurette, a feature called "Comic Books and Super Heroes," a multi-angle view of the train-station sequence, and a short film that M. Night Shyamalan made as a teenager.

I generally like Shyamalan's films, but Unbreakable ranks among my least favorites along with Lady in the Water . The subject matter didn't appeal to me and the presentation on Blu-ray was a bit of a disappointment.

Release Date: April 1, 2008

Film: 6.0 out of 10
Picture: 7.0 out of 10
Sound: 7.0 out of 10

Review System

Source
Sony PlayStation 3

Display
JVC DLA-RS1 projector
Stewart FireHawk screen (76.5" wide, 16:9)

Electronics
Onkyo Pro PR-SC885 pre/pro
Anthem PVA-7 power amplifier
Belkin PF60 power conditioner

Speakers
M&K S-150s (L, C, R)
M&K SS-150s (LS, RS, SBL, SBR)
SVS PC-Ultra subwoofer

Cables
Monoprice HDMI cables (source to pre/pro)
Best Deal analog-audio cables
PureLink HDC Fiber Optic HDMI Cable System (15 meters) from pre/pro to projector