The The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (English) Blu-ray Download Movie
Martial Salleh
At the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s, CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and KGB agent Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) must put aside longstanding hostilities to stop a mysterious international criminal organization bent on destabilizing the fragile balance of world power. With only one lead, the agents race to find a vanished German scientist who is the key to infiltrating the organization in this cool, stylish action-adventure from director Guy Ritchie.
Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." centers on CIA agent Solo and KGB agent Kuryakin. Forced to put aside longstanding hostilities, the two team up on a joint mission to stop a mysterious international criminal organization, which is bent on destabilizing the fragile balance of power through the proliferation of nuclear weapons andtechnology. The duo's only lead is the daughter of a vanished German scientist, who is the key to infiltrating the criminal organization, and they must race against time to find him and prevent a worldwide catastrophe.
Director Guy Ritchie's 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' is another in a long line of attempted reboots of once-popular television series. In this case, the series starred Robert Vaughn and David McCallum (neither of whom, sadly, are given cameos here) as a CIA and KGB agent, respectively, who team up to stop the bad guys. In this update, Vaughn's role of Napoleon Solo is taken over by the Man of Steel himself, Henry Cavill, while the role of Russian Illya Kuryakin is given to The Lone Ranger, Armie Hammer.
The best aspect of the movie is the way Ritchie and company have tried to make things look and feel like a 1960's spy movie. Yes, there's a lot of similarities between what we see here and what we saw in those early James Bond films with Sean Connery. While Cavill's Solo may have the dashing looks of a young Connery, his dry wit and dead-pan humor is strictly Roger Moore. Meanwhile, the musical score (both original material by Composer Daniel Pemberton and songs from the period) helps add to giving the movie a genuine period feel to it.
'The Man from U.N.C.L.E' fights its way onto home video in this Blu-ray/DVD/Digital HD combo pack. The dual-layer DVD and 50GB Blu-ray are housed inside an eco-friendly keepcase, which also includes an insert containing a code for an UltraViolet digital copy of the movie. A slipcover with artwork matching that of the keepcase's slick slides overtop. Both the Blu-ray and DVD are front-loaded with a trailer for 'Batman v. Superman' and a promo ad for Digital HD. The DVD also includes an anti-tobacco ad, a trailer for The 33, a promo the CBS TV series 'Supergirl', and an ad for Warners' disc-to-digital program. The main menu of the Blu-ray is a standard Warners' design, with a still image of the characters and menu selections running across the bottom of the screen.
Note: Yours truly has not yet upgraded to the Dolby Atomos system (the featured track here plays in Dolby TrueHD 7.1 for the rest of us), so I enlisted the aid of Atmos guru and fellow HDD reviewer Michael S. Palmer to check out 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s Atmos track and report back. What follows are his impressions of the Atmos audio experience.
While I'll leave comments on the 7.1 Dolby TrueHD core audio track (Dolby Atmos folds down to 7.1 or 5.1 when Atmos-enabled AV Receivers are not detected) to Shannon, 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' is a surprisingly timid audio mix that rises to immersive during action sequences, but never fully roars. First, let's talk strengths. Dialogue levels are perfect; each actor's vocal performances are as clear in two-person scene as they are in action sequences. This is a good thing, given how much of the film is dedicated to banter. Daniel Pemberton's music is also a showstopper in the way it jumps between genres, evoking jazz, sixties-era tunes, traditional action movie score, choral movements, and one incredible thundering drum sequence. Sound effects themselves are nuanced, from the smallest light bulb to blazing gunshots. Surround sound activity is excellent, delivering precise effects placement the creates a 360-degree soundstage.
Thanks, Michael! I'd like to say hearing the track downgraded to 7.1 is a much better experience, but I wasn't overwhelmed with it there, either. While the dialogue comes off as crisp and clear, both the musical soundtrack and the ambient sounds of the track are pumped up louder than the spoken word, making for a slightly uneven mix. This is obviously a mix that is trying to show off the audio, but it seems unnatural and results in it being more of a distraction than it should be. This doesn't make this track different from many others I've listened to in the past (Sony, for example, is notorious for mixing their tracks with low dialogue versus amping up everything else), but most Warner Bros. releases I've checked out don't have this issue. 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' is an exception to that rule. Some may enjoy the 'showy' audio of this title, but I wasn't a big fan of this mix, despite the lack of any technical glitches.
While 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' is a great-looking movie with some nicely directed visual sequences from Director Guy Ritchie, it's also devoid of real character development or the ability to engage its audience in any meaningful way. The result is a title that's fun to look at, but one that doesn't leave you with any real desire to visit it a second time. Rent it.
I am a massive fan of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and especially the two films mentioned. Both films already have blu-ray releases from Strand in US and New Wave Films in UK. I was wondering if I should just go ahead and get either the US or UK versions (if so, which) or should I just wait for a possible Criterion release of either?
This collection is quite valuable for anyone interested in portrayals of race and slavery in mainstream American films of the silent era. I do also urge anyone watching these films to seek out black voices from the time and appreciate that there were always viewers, critics and academics who pushed for sympathetic and non-stereotyped portrayals in the movies.
I found this movie to be a bit of a disappointment, pretty much juvenile silliness with annoying dialog among the child actors throughout. Nigel Green was too polite and charming to come across as man who would kill his own nephew. There are a few scares, but it just was not compelling enough, perhaps a little too tongue in cheek. It was like a toned-down William Castle film. The film is a comedy horror, but the comedy was lacking, and the suspense and horror aspect was mild. It was a far cry from Night of the Hunter a movie with a similar theme (children being hunted by an adult).
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Hello and welcome to the Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies and animation and the release on digital DVD, blu-ray, 4k or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Lard, your host, and joining me today is George Feltonstein to review some of the October Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. Hi, george.
Well, this is an example of what happens when you have an original nitrate negative that survives, which is exceptionally rare on RMGM titles because of the Eastman house fire and various other situations. So the original negative was scanned at 4K and we've made this quantum leap. The previous master that we had that was out on DVD was probably 30 years old and not just standard definition but coming from like a fourth generation film element and sounded awful, basically. So to have it look like this and it sounds really good too. They did a tremendous job at MPIA on the picture and our archival audio mastering. They did wonderful restoration on the sound. I've always had an affinity for this film because it's so pre-code, it's not as lascivious as it's implying lascivious behavior and she's terrific in it. She's still very much the same flapper we saw three years earlier in our dancing daughters.
Yeah, that's an interesting story that you had seen the clip there first of this film and then you ended up putting it on here because that documentary didn't come out until 1972. So it's caught a few years later from Dan's Fool's Dance. But it really works well because right after watching the film I watched that documentary. I was very much looking forward to it and it's a pretty long documentary. I mean it really tells the story well and it goes into so many fantastic actors and actresses from that classic era. I mean it was fascinating. And to see that in HD I think it's terrific and even before the cartoons you put on there makes for an amazing package here.
One of the things that I thought was really special about this is that this was a movie that when I was growing up, you couldn't see it. It wasn't on television. It might have been in some markets, but it wasn't on TV in New York. Is that because? of the pre-code element of it. No, no, no, it's just that there was, with rare exception of famous, more famous movies from 1931, you would be able to see Little Caesar, or you would be able to see Public Enemy or Frankenstein. You know other 1931 films that were well known, but by the time that I was old enough to be looking for classic movies on television, you're not going to see it in a major market. It's possible that certain smaller areas might show movies like that, but generally you'd be dependent on a film society or a repertory theater. They were very hard to see and home video coming along as it did by, I think 1989 or 90, dance Fool's Dance came out on VHS and Betamax as part of the first Forbidden Hollywood home video releases, and that was in my youth at MGMUA home video and we continued that. Dance Fool's Dance was one of the early releases on DVD from Warner Archive and comparing the DVD we released 14 years ago to this new gorgeous Blu-ray, it's an astounding change and it speaks to what we're able to achieve when we're given the tools and the funding to do this kind of work, and it's really a very entertaining disc and I think people are really going to enjoy adding this to their collection.
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