Blu Ray review: The Book of Eli (2010)

The Book of Eli
2010
118 minutes
rated R
Available June 15th from Warner Home Video on DVD, Blu Ray, iTunes, and OnDemand.

For the theatrical review of this picture, go here.

The Blu Ray - Like all recent Warner Bros titles, the film is housed in a double-disc set, with the Blu Ray containing the feature and supplemental features on one disc and a DVD copy containing the film and a digital copy of said film on the other. As for the Blu Ray, the disc accurately represents the muted, brown-centric color palette and is generally rich with detail. Like Sherlock Holmes (and I'd presume The Wolfman), this is a film that was likely shown in theaters with incorrect bulb-lighting levels all over the country, which probably rendered it relatively underlit and grubby looking in auditoriums. Thus, I can only presume that the Blu Ray probably looks better than the theatrical presentation in all-but the best theaters. This is not an audio powerhouse in any sense of the term, but the sound effects, music, and dialogue are properly separated and the dialogue is always crystal-clear.

Extras-wise, the film comes with the usual 'Maximum Movie Mode' function, which is fashioned more like a traditional picture-in-picture commentary than the more immersive versions found on Terminator: Salvation or Sherlock Holmes. The rest of the supplements total about 75 minutes. There are 35 minutes worth of 'Focus Points' featurettes (which are of course also found on the Maximum Movie Mode), as well as a five-minute featurette of the music. The two-minutes of deleted/extended scenes are worth a glance. They include a seemingly gorier version of a second-act fight scene, an additional final moment for Gary Oldman, and a brief glimpse at a discarded Time magazine that implies that the world-changing events occurred in 2009. The other features of note are two documentaries, running a total of 31 minutes, that deal with how societies would deal with post-apocalyptic times, as well as a look at the spiritual ideology of this religious fable. Finally, we have a five-minute animated feature, created by the Hughes Brothers, detailing the back-story behind Gary Oldman's villain.

Scott Mendelson