Blu-ray Review HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: Ronin (1 Viewer)

[Duane Robinson]

I really love this movie and right now I'm debating between getting it or Akira, which I also love. Both seem to have less than impressive image quality but at least the sound will be a bigger upgrade from the 2.0 Japanese on Akira compared to the decent 5.1 sound on the SD DVD for Ronin. I just bought Reservoir Dogs for $10 at Walmart so I think I'll keep an eye out and hopefully I can catch Ronin for that same price some time down the road.

 

[AaronMK]

Too bad. I really like this movie, but the poor PQ prevents me from justifying a purchase, and I would have been happy even if a high quality presentation of the film was the only thing on a reasonably priced release. MGM, I'll reconsider if/when you decide to do this right.
Hopefully this is not indicative of what we should expect on The Princess Bride.

 

[Dave H]

The screenshots at DVD Beaver look pretty good with grain intact. I'll give this a rental at some point.

 

[Jim_K]

Contrast can also be rather flat and dull, a byproduct of the film's intentionally muted color palette, I'm sure, but without that knowledge it would be easy to suspect the transfer of robbing the film of its color as well.

Ronin has always had a muted color scheme, never looked pretty.
Anyway I had a gift card to burn and found this at Fry's for a better price than anywhere online so I picked it up.
I found this to be pretty middle of the road PQ-wise, which to me is passible. Not even close to the best but far from the worst MGM (or any)transfer I've seen (cough**Robocop). Needless to say I didn't have nearly as many issues with this as Cameron did, though I did notice the lack of detail on the fly-over scenes.
Perhaps the flaws are more apparent when blown up to the largest of screen sizes but to my tired 40 year old eyes on my 70" 1080P setup, it looked fine for the most part. I'm glad to have it in my collection.

 

[Carlo_M]

Dadgummit! I have been waiting to buy this film on high def for years, and what a total disappointment.

 

[Martin Henry]

I just picked it up today since it's one of my favorite movies and I have to say that the presentation is light years ahead of the SD version. Is the BD all it could be? No. But I couldn't care less about the extras. The film looks very good on my 61" Samsung and I'm very happy to have this movie on BD.

I've had the UK version for over a year now. It's the same transfer and there's no way it's as bad as a 2.5. Of some of the crap that's been released on BD recently, from upconverted trash,(a lot of that going on with UK distributors), to lazy 50hz transfers, Ronin for me, does not fall into the 'poor HD' catagory. Not in the slightest.

 

[John Nelson]

I don't know why they couldn't at least have included John Frankenheimer's audio commentary from the DVD. That for me is an egregious oversight/omission. Frankenheimer was knowledgeable and opinionated and I've not heard that commentary yet. I hope his Grand Prix, another much-anticipated Blu-Ray release for me, will get better treatment when and if it's released.

 

[David Wilkins]

I smell a future "Deluxe Edition", which was probably in the back of their minds all along. Why should anything have changed?

 

[Brad Vautrinot]

It looks very good on my 40" Bravia - like I remember it in the theater. I compared this to the Japanese release which also looks good. No way are these a 2.5. More like a 4 or 4.5. I found many of the scenes very lifelike and three-dimensional.

Brad

 

[Citizen87645]

Somewhat reflective of the comments in this thread, the video scores for this title are showing quite a spread amongst reviewers.
Cinema Squid - Ronin (1998) [Blu-ray]

 

[Michael Reuben]

In Cameron I trust.

 

[Citizen87645]

Ha! I take it that's some residual wordplay from reviewing Religulous?

 

[Michael Reuben]

No, from being a tightwad!

 

[Duane Robinson]

I'm a weak, weak man. I went to Frys to get Silence of the Lambs and ended up buying Ronin as well since I love that movie so much. The higher quality sound should at least make me feel not so guilty about buying it if the video doesn't live up to its full potential.

 

[Ron-P]

I rented this and just watched it tonight, wow, what a poorly done Blu-ray. I agree with the 2.5 video score but I'd only give the audio a 3, not a 4 per the review. It's like watching an upscaled DVD.
Such a shame for such a fantastic film.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Thanks for bumping up this thread as I looked at the current pricing at Amazon for it and at 19.99 I just bought it since I'm not going to wait several years for them to do again and it's an upgrade from the dvd.

Crawdaddy

 

[Ron-P]

I'll wait. The A/V on this is one of the worst I've seen on Blu so far.

 

[cineMANIAC]

I'm a recent Blu-ray convert and this is exactly the kind of thing I feared would happen - studios (in this case, an ailing one) pumping out mediocre discs without extras and charging an arm and a leg. Do they really expect people to buy this stuff with these kind of deficiencies, in this economy? I always knew it wasn't going to be necessary to upgrade my entire collection to Blu and now it has been confirmed.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Originally Posted by Luisito34
charging an arm and a leg.

This disc can be had for $10-12, if you look around. And after watching a Showtime HD broadcast, I bought it at about that price and found it more than acceptable. Indeed, my expectations had been so lowered by this thread that I was pleasantly surprised.

 

[hampsteadbandit]

I'm late to this forum thread and starting to get a little worried as a few weeks back (as part of a big DVD clear-out) I traded in my DVD copy of Ronin and picked it up on Blu-Ray

I'll admit I got it from an exchange shop (still in the plastic wrapper) so only paid GBP£12, and have not watched it yet, as its a film I love and am very familiar with, so wanted to wait a while before enjoying it again

I might have to go and watch it now, to see what the verdict is on the PQ (I have the UK version if that is any different to the version reviewed on this forum?)