Public Enemies – Blu Ray Review
Public Enemies
In the shadow of the Great Depression, criminal minds are thriving, notorious men like John Dillnger (Johnny Depp), “Baby Face” Nelson (Stephen Graham) and “Pretty Boy” Floyd (Channing Tatum) and it’s up to J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and the FBI to bring them down. Michael Mann directs this gritty crime drama based on the book by Bryan Burrough. Christian Bale, Giovanni Ribisi and Leelee Sobieski co-star.
I am not going to review the movie itself, Roger Ebert did a much better job than I could probably ever do. While I did enjoy this movie, I just wasn’t impressed with the Blu Ray itself. But because I like to make things some what organized how about a list, we all love lists right? Here is what you get with your copy of Public Enemies
on Blu Ray.
- Larger than Life: Adversaries
- Michael Mann: Making Public Enemies
- Last of the Legendary Outlaws
- On Dillinger’s Trail: The Real Locations
- Criminal Technology
- Gangster Movie Challenge
- Feature Commentary w/ Michael Mann
- U-Control (but seriously, who wants to grab there remote to press a button middle of the movie? I know I don’t)
While these are a good amount of extras for a movie, I remember a time when DVD’s had special features as well. As far as this movie having more special features than a DVD, I have to say it does not, nor do I feel that for special features alone it is worth it to get this movie on Blu Ray.
But how about the quality? I didn’t notice that great of a picture on my TV and there was a very annoying light that would flicker throughout the movie during some darker scenes. It annoyed me so much I had to pop in Transformers 2 on Blu Ray to make sure it wasn’t my TV doing it, I was happy to find out it was just the movie. Unfortunately for the movie this made me HATE the way it was shot / edited, if you have seen this movie on Blu Ray let me know if you also noticed the picture flashing at parts. The picture itself was pretty grainy, and I’m not watching on a 720p tv, it’s 1080p and it’s 50″ so I see no reason why this picture should be grainy when it’s on a 50gb Blu Ray Disc. I understand that they may have shot the movie to look like that but seriously would having a clear picture take anything away from the movie? No it would have made it so I could see a nice clear picture no matter where I was sitting. So picture quality sucked.
How about the sound? This is where the movie does excel, I was very pleased with the sound quality and I was just using my TV’s speakers in “surround mode” it sounded very good. While I am not sure what the DVD sound quality is like, if you own a surround sound system I highly recommend you look into getting the Blu Ray copy over the DVD.
So where do I stand with this movie? I’m happy I got this through NetFlix, I didn’t see it in theaters so it was a great way to see the movie. I was not impressed with the picture but it really excelled in the sound and those of you who like your share of special features wont be left without anything. I give Public Enemies
on Blu Ray a C+. If the picture would have been nice and crisp this would have easily gotten a B+ however since the picture was noticeably grainy I can’t give it a terrific score. If you enjoy crime dramas, or are just looking for another movie to make your Blu Ray library bigger I’d say get this, otherwise I’d rent the movie first.
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