Pride and Glory Blu-ray

New Line Cinema | 2008 | 130 mins | Rated R | Jan 27, 2009

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Video Video codec: VC-1 Video resolution: 1080p Aspect ratio: 1.85:1 Audio English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English: Dolby Digital 5.1 English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (less) Subtitles English, Spanish English, Spanish (less) Disc 25GB Blu-ray Disc Digital copy

Price List price: $24.98  Amazon: $11.99 (Save 52%) Third party: $7.00 (Save 72%) Usually ships in 24 hours Blu-ray rating Users 3.5 Reviewer 3.5 Overall 3.5 Based on 11 user ratings Playback Region free

Pride and Glory

The moment Pride and Joy began peddling its high-def wares on my screen, I had several distinct flashbacks to watching Warner's own Blu-ray edition of Michael Clayton. O'Connor's palette offers up vivid primaries at times (particularly when the cameras visit the Tierney abode), but the vast majority of colors have been exorcised from the print. Steely blues, pale skintones, and inky (albeit occasionally faulty) blacks dominate the image to great effect, producing a three-dimensional picture with a convincing level of depth. Likewise, a noticeable veneer of grain is an integral part of the experience, but rarely overwhelms the cinematography or robs foreground elements of their finest textures. Detail is a bit inconsistent -- most shots are sharp and well defined, while others are soft and shaky -- but I would attribute each instance to the film's source rather than its technical transfer (no matter what flaws our beloved bitrate junkies may accuse this single-layer disc of producing). To its credit, long shots are shockingly crisp, noise is kept to a minimum, DNR is nowhere to be found, and I didn't catch sight of any significant edge enhancement.

Unfortunately, crush is a frequent issue, delineation is hit-or-miss, faint macroblocking occasionally appears in the shadows, and low-lit interiors are plagued by problematic visual discrepancies. Granted, most of the transfer's flaws are easy to ignore since O'Connor clearly had no desire to make an attractive film, but they also don't allow the disc to stand out as anything more than a noteworthy upgrade from its murky DVD counterpart. I'm sure fans will defend every frame as being faithful to the director's intention and I can't say they'd be wrong. Pride and Glory looks pretty good considering its filmmakers' aesthetic choices... I just doubt it will stir up nearly as much praise as other transfers debuting this month.

Pride and Glory Blu-ray, Audio Quality

Pride and Glory features a confident and reliable Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround track that captures the lively atmosphere of busy city streets, enhances the heft of its soundscape with sturdy LFE support, and manages to keep the listener immersed even during the quietest scenes. While the film itself is a fairly front-heavy affair populated with hushed conversations and tense exchanges, the rear speakers produce believable acoustics and involving ambience. Better still, when violence explodes on the screen, the entire soundfield is there to meet it. Precise directionality allows shouts to erupt from every direction, crystal clear pans deliver whizzing bullets from one channel to the next, and refined fidelity keeps the nicely prioritized dialogue crisp and clean. Even footfalls during chase scenes and the hum of florescent lights in an interrogation room have their fitting place in the mix. The third act may nab most of the sound designers' attention, but the rest of the film sounds considerably better than I expected.

If I'm prepared to furrow my brow at anything it's the fact that a few sound effects are suddenly and abruptly left to the imagination. When O'Connor's camera focuses in on a character, background elements sometimes jarringly disappear from the soundfield. It's not a common problem, but I did notice it on a few occasions during Ray's initial investigation, once in the midst of a sudden convenience store gunfight, and several times during the chaotic third act. Perhaps the sound designers were trying to emulate the main character's panic or thoughtfulness in each scenario, but it drew my attention away from the film too often to escape a mention. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly not as bad as a critical paragraph of this size might suggest, but rather a minor mishap in an otherwise noteworthy lossless presentation.

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