Universal appears to have established waves of releasing the same titles they started releasing on HD DVD before the format went under and the first wave is what they are considering their Blu-ray Action Starter Pack. This collection, whose titles can also be purchased individually, contains the Blu-ray editions of Miami Vice, End of Days and U-571. These are three titles I am sure all of you recognize, but I am not entirely sure they are three titles anyone really recognizes as good. However, these releases show promise for future BD releases out of Universal, which is a good thing.
First off, the best of the bunch is easily Michael Mann’s highly flawed Miami Vice. This is a film that upset me more than you can possibly imagine. Mann looked like he had the perfect cast and “Miami Vice” was his baby. I actually watched this one just last night and immediately afterwards I popped in the pilot episode of the television series only to see Mann’s name plastered all over it. However, even though I don’t particularly like Miami Vice on a whole, there are a lot of things to enjoy and this Blu-ray disc carries over all of the U-Control features from the HD DVD release and despite my dislike for the film, the features are actually a bit of fun.
The Miami Vice Blu-ray includes all the making of features from the HD DVD, the Michael Mann commentary and the unrated and theatrical versions of the film. The U-Control feature includes the picture-in-picture, the production photos, the tech specs, the cast bios and the GPS feature. Of the bunch the tech specs and GPS feature are easily the coolest. While you are watching the film a Google Maps feature will instantly pop-up showing you where you are and where you are going. I think it’s something like 220 miles from Miami to Havana and they were going something like 93 mph on their way there in Crockett’s go-fast boat. On top of that I learned how to make a Mojito in the process. It’s not important stuff, but it does make watching the movie a little more interesting should you need that diversion.
As I watched the film though the continuing problem continued to nag at me. Why the hell did they make Colin Farrell’s character fall in love with Gong Li? That relationship ruined the second half of the film. It’s too bad, because there are some really great moments and a lot of good gun play and with the DTS track this thing is equipped with it will hammer on your speaker system something fierce. I will say that Mann’s decision to go 100% HD in the filming of Vice is another thing that doesn’t come off all that well on Blu-ray. I can’t remember if there was this much video noise in the theatrical presentation, but there are some moments where the dark night sky is almost brown there is so much noise in the scene. It is downright ugly. The scene at the beginning of the film with Crockett and Tubbs on a rooftop is almost too ugly to watch it is so fuzzy and distorted. If that was Mann’s intention then good on him, but damn it isn’t pretty to look at. It can’t even be classified as “gritty” it looks that bad.
Next we have U-571, a film I started watching thinking I hadn’t seen it before when I actually had. That is how memorable this flick is and it becomes obvious Universal only chose this title because of its use of sound. If that is what you are going for and you just want to show off that monster video system of yours then by all means pick this one up as pings and depth charges will blow out your walls as this release is yet another upgrade from its HD DVD counterpart with DTS-HD sound. However, if a good movie is what you desire then please don’t start here. The biggest problem is that U-571 takes itself so seriously it can’t even pass as a popcorn flick.
There is one bonus to this release and it was something I was alluding to in the opening when I said these releases showed promise for future Blu-ray releases from Universal.
The HD DVD version of U-571 included six featurettes to go along with the commentary from director Jonathan Mostow. Universal decided to not even include those features, at least not in their original form, and instead that took the content of each feature and turned it all into their U-Control Picture-in-Picture feature, something I hope all home video retailers do from this point forward, especially with the more generic crap that no one really wants to watch anyway. Passing off webisodes as actual features is gimmicky and lame, but if you add it to a bunch of other material you can tie into specific sections of the film and show over the top of it is a great idea.
End of Days takes the exact same idea U-571 used and merges four featurettes inside a U-Control Picture-in-Picture feature only keeping the Peter Hyams director commentary as the only stand alone feature. End of Days also continues the trend of DTS-HD sound and while it sounds and looks fantastic this film is not that good either.
End of Days came out the same year as Stigmata and it was around this time that all this end of the world Y2K crap was at its height and while that is fun for a while, it is now eight years later and it all seems rather silly. Arnold Schwarzenegger is asked to do way too much in this film in terms of acting and while Gabriel Byrne is always a fun bad guy this is a role he has been seen in way too many times now and it just isn’t all that exciting.
Universal is doing the right thing releasing a selection of titles that simply test the high-def waters with releases of little consequence, much like they did with HD DVD while releasing their new titles on both DVD and Blu-ray. With HD DVD it afforded them the chance to test and tinker with their HD exclusive features and the U-Control feature improved vastly from its first clunky incarnation to a fully functional and highly user friendly feature as it is now. The next wave of catalog titles from Universal will include Dawn of the Dead, The Thing, Knocked Up, Land of the Dead and The 40-Year-Old Virgin on September 30, the same weekend they also release Forgetting Sarah Marshall on both DVD and Blu-ray. It will be interesting to see if they once again combine the generic features into one big Picture-in-Picture feature. I certainly hope they do.
