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Release Date: January 23, 2007 Film Rating:   / Starring: Robert De Niro (Master Chief “Billy” Sunday), Cuba Gooding Jr. (Chief Carl Brashear), Charlize Theron (Gwen Sunday), Aunjanue Ellis (Jo), Michael Rapaport (Snowhill) Written by: Scott Marshall Smith Directed by: George Tillman Jr. History is made by those who break the rules. Men of Honor is based on historical events surrounding the first African-American Naval Diver, Carl Brashear, in the 1960’s. Following his father’s advice to leave the farm and get an education, Carl joins the U.S. Navy and ultimately decides to become a Navy deep-sea diver. But there are many who are determined to see Carl fail; despite the military’s desegregation over 20 years prior, racism still runs rampant within. Brashear must face the challenges of his training officer and his commander, who are both dead-set on him failing despite his superior abilities to complete the tasks. But Brashear is too proud to fail and determined to face his challengers and become the first black man to move through the ranks and ultimately become a master diver. Men of Honor is an inspirational film and worth the recommendation on this reason alone. It’s not often we see uplifting films when the entire world seems to focus more on the negative – so to some this movie may appear a bit too mushy with pride. The film is edited well but it felt much longer than the running time. More bang for the buck? You decide. The high-def source for this film looks great! From opening to finale, this Blu-ray disc delivers an exceptional amount of high resolution. There are many extreme close-ups used in the photography; the film is focussed and detailed. The textures in the skin; every wrinkle and every hair and each drop of Gooding’s sweat glitters in the light – all of this is lost on the DVD. There is no comparison! Since real resolution is added, the depth of the image is increased substantially. View the earlier scenes of Carl’s childhood and take a look at the trees and fields in the background of the farm; the detail and depth is lost on DVD because of limitations of the format and compression artefacts. The BD is razor sharp and is not affected by compression problems. Only a minor amount of edge enhancement has been applied and can be scene on some scenes more than others. Another benefit of this Blu-ray release is increased colour resolution. Colours are not as murky and seem to be “one” with the image rather than “laid on top.” Be it skin tones, coloured interior lights (such as beer ad lights in the Navy bar), or the deck of a vessel, colours take on a whole new meaning when watching Men of Honor. I noticed film grain in the good way; it looked natural rather than noisy but still had a slightly digitized look as seen in Courage Under Fire. The aspect ratio appears correct at 2.35:1. While the soundtrack attempts to keep the action up front most of the time, credit has to be given to the sound mix for providing constant ambience in all channels. Surrounds are recorded a bit lower in level but help wrap any visual environment all around the listener despite how subtle it is. Surrounds come alive during action scenes with discrete and direct effects helping to localize items. Most effective is when the Russian submarine moves from rear-to-front as if it’s passing over us in our seats. LFE can be fairly strong at these moments and using a tactile transducer can help shake the seat up a bit more. There is no D-Box enhancement on this title because it’s not an action movie, but a tactile transducer/bass shaker does help bring the film alive a bit more. Listening to the core bitstream of this DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack reveals the higher quality of this soundtrack recording. I found it exceptionally clear and articulate, non-fatiguing, and very dynamic when cued to be. For the most part the soundtrack is quiet in nature and delivers many low-level details that I’d think would have been lost in a theatrical presentation. It all seems intact for home theatre purposes and will sound even better once lossless DTS decoders are available. Like Courage Under Fire, the recording quality of Men of Honor’s cheery original score is very good. That’s uplifting in more ways than one! / TRANSDUCER ON/OFF?: ON / Shy on special features, we get a commentary track from director George Tillman, Cuba Gooding Jr., Producer Robert Teitel and writer Scott Marshall Smith Jr. Gooding is the most exciting of the four and from what I listened to, it seems to be full of good information. I listened to the commentary as I viewed the trivia track. This feature seems commonplace on Fox BD. Personally, I like reading them. In this case, when you are watching the film you’ll see pop-ups of historical facts about the U.S. Navy, the character’s real life role in it, as well as production notes on the film. Some of these pop-ups also have live motion in an accompanying frame – a cool feature for Blu-ray not possible on DVD. Lastly, the film’s theatrical trailer is included in HD but isn’t as sharp as the film. Trailers for other Fox BD titles are also included, but are not of any that aren’t already released. IN THE END... This is another excellent Blu-ray release from Fox. The video and audio quality is excellent in all respects and I’m looking forward to more high quality releases in the future. Recommended. Michael Osadciw January 09, 2007. |
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