Blu-ray Review HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: In the Line of Fire (1 Viewer)

[OliverK]

I watched this yesterday and after several stellar transfers from Sony that I watched before this was quite a letdown.

It looks dated and wanting in detail as well as grain structure.

I did not even notice the ringing that much and was more bothered by the fact that even in closeups faces never seemed to come into focus, let alone long and medium shots - the power of DNR and grain reduction applied to an older master I guess.

 

[Dale MA]

If we're comparing this to other Sony transfers then yes, it is slightly lacking - however, if you compare it to the original DVD... then wow, there's no contest, the DVD transfer is horrible whilst this looks pretty damn good.

 

[Tim Glover]

As Crawdaddy mentions, to each his own really in regards to what we think looks ok. We recently watched the BD of Dirty Harry. It was kind of inconsistent but mostly looked pretty good. The parts that were a tad noisy were fine as for me it, it reminded me I was watching a film made in 1971. And that made the experience more authentic.

So, the 'dated' look of films is really a good thing. We watched In The Line Of Fire last night and it's a good Blu-ray disc. I can't remember much from 1993 but nothing stuck out.

It's also a terrific film and the Blu-ray disc doesn't really call attention to itself and allowed us to soak up the screenplay. Isn't that the whole point?

 

[OliverK]

Tim,

I made a lengthy reply to your post and for some reason the forum software just did not post it so here I go again a little shorter: I wanted to say was that the transfer looked dated to me, not the movie itself. Faces are lacking in detail, foucs is lacking overall and colors look to be kind of muted, too.

I like the look of Dirty Harry much more as it really looks like Film and especially details in fine structures and faces are much more visible in that one, also actors faces do not only have that uniform "one shade fits all of the face" color as In the Line of Fire - very happy I am with Dirty Harry indeed

Oliver

 

[Michael Reuben]

Oliver, as a long-time fan of In the Line of Fire, who has seen every DVD version as well as the Blu-ray and the original film release (though I can't claim to recall the image in detail), let me say this:

The color scheme has always been muted. The special edition DVD tried to "push" the colors, with results that weren't very good (IMO). The Blu-ray presents a much better balance.

There appears to have been some amount of DNR, but it's minor. My visual tests for this are relatively simple:

• Are the faces waxen, like the "mannequin" faces in Trading Places or The Untouchables? Here they aren't.
• Does fast motion cause blurring (as in Face/Off)? I've only watched ItLoF once on BD, but the scene of chaos at the Bonaventure Hotel is one of the film's highlights, and it looked great on this disc.

I did not find focus to be lacking, but I was judging it by different shots: namely, the long shots of massive crowds at rallies, which have never had sufficient detail on standard DVDs to create the same effect as they did in the theater. On the BD, they finally do.

In close-ups on faces, I was struck by something different, and that was how completely invisible the makeup was on Malkovich's many disguises. This leads me to wonder whether the original photography wasn't somehow filtered to achieve that effect. There's no way to know without consulting the cinematographer. (I don't believe Petersen covers this in his commentary, but it's been years since I listened to it.)

Overall, while it's not a perfect disc, I think it's a very good one.

M.

 

[OliverK]

Michael,

I am also a fan of this movie and at least the Blu-Ray is the first version on prerecorded media that I consider watchable, so I am happy that I was able to rewatch it finally

I also saw In the Line of Fire in a movie theater and remember that at the time I thought that Eastwood was looking so old in this movie, it was almost painful in some scenes especially the romantic ones.

On this Blu-Ray he looks rather young as his face and neck look so uniform and smooth and this immediately struck me as odd and I am pretty sure this was not the intended look.

I have rewatched a few minutes today for demonstration purposes by the way and indeed smearing in motion is not prevalent with ILF, but then smearing is not as much of a problem with some newer DNR algorythms even when you want to go for the ultra clean look like in Patton. Add to that a high probability that the master used by Sony was too old to have true 1920 x 1080 resolution in the first place, and there was not as much detail/grain to get rid of anyway.

And while I do not agree with this being a very good transfer I do not consider it that bad either but still a disappointment given Sonys recent track record with one stellar transfer after another.

Oliver

 

[Michael Reuben]

You can't have it both ways. If it's an old master, it's not going to get the benefit of newer DNR processing. The whole reason for using an old master is to save the trouble of doing new processing. You just ship the old master to the compressionist. (Otherwise we wouldn't have messes like Face/Off.) Also, the color values between this transfer and the previous DVD are so different that I find it unlikely that this is an old transfer.

Ultimately, though, we have no way of knowing the technical specifics without an inside source. Maybe one of our "connected" participants can help out.

M.

 

[OliverK]

100% agree.
After the conflicting information we got from Sony about The Fifth Element and Lawrence of Arabia I am not sure if we should expect too much useful information from them when it comes to suboptimal masters/transfers, but I would not mind to be pleasantly surprised in this case.

So until we hear more I suggest that we agree to disagree and if a better version of ILF is released at some point in the future we both won't be unhappy about that - even if it makes Clint Eastwood look older

Oliver

 

[Michael Reuben]

Sorry, I didn't mean to indicate that "nothing" is done. My point was that the whole reason for using an old transfer is to save money by doing as little as possible. As for the Face/Off comparison you've linked to, I'm already familiar with it, and if you read the linked thread at AVS, no one could agree on why the two looked different -- some people couldn't even see the difference, though I can -- but I'd say the weight of opinion tended toward the point I've bolded above: it's the encoding. The encoding is not DNR.

And to repeat a previous point: This BD has very different color values than the special edition DVD from 2001. So it's unlikely to be sourced from that transfer. If it's from an older transfer, it would have to be from the original DVD in 1997. I suppose that's possible, but it seems unlikely.

M.

 

[Sam Davatchi]

Yes, she is the assassin!