Public Enemies Blu-ray Review

**The News Bot** · 01-11-2009, 8:25 PM

Reviewed by Alan Paterson, 1st November 2009
Michael Mann’s ‘Public Enemies’, a retelling of the Dillinger story, explodes onto Blu-ray in a 1080p VC-1 encoded transfer, framed at 2.40:1. Starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale it depicts the cat and mouse game played between Dillinger and the Police back in the 1930’s. The movie was shot in digital High Def so it generally looks bitingly sharp with good colour and contrast throughout, although some night scenes display a few deficiencies in image quality. The DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround track will have you ducking for cover as bullets ricochet around your room, but the strange audio effects applied to the dialogue in a few places might make your ears ask for greater clarity. Nothing wrong with the Blu-ray, that’s the way it was in the cinema too. A commentary by director Michael Mann, a fine collection of mini-featurettes and a trivia challenge round off the package as extras.

Read the full review...

Smurfin · 02-11-2009, 9:35 PM

I have to say your review of the movie is at odds with all the major reviews (Empire etc)....but I completely agree with you

A good, solid movie, but I didn't care enough about any of the characters. I love Michael Mann's movies (in fact I didn't know it was a Michael Mann movie but guessed within the first 5 minutes....), but this certainly isn't his best.

Worth a watch, but repeat viewing? I'm not so sure....

Jan Pogonowski · 02-11-2009, 11:08 PM

Just finished watching my rental copy on my PS3 on a 1080p 40" Sony V4000 in DTS 5.1. There were strange dips in dialogue on occasions. I noticed some quite heavy grain in some areas, and it was a bit dark in some scenes for my display. I found the film quite dull, but I think it was because the 1930s setting was quite dull too. Based on a true story I have to give the film credit, but it just didn't peak for me. 5/10.

Alan Paterson · 03-11-2009, 12:14 AM

Hi Jan,
Just wondered if you'd had your display calibrated or even just set up using the test patterns on a HD Video Essentials disc.
Alan

confused88 · 03-11-2009, 4:34 PM

I found the movie to be dull and uninspiring. In some of of his previous films the combination of the two leading male characters worked so well. Pacino and Deniro in Heat and Pacino and R. Crowe in the Insider would be such examples. This time it was very uneven, too much J. Depp and you couldn't care less about the C.Bale character nor the one portrayed by M. Cotillard.

hooray33 · 07-11-2009, 6:11 PM

Rented a copy and the 'netting' type vertical lines are horribly distracting and ruined my involvement entirely. Thought it was my set up but other disks display fine. I do recall seeing the same defect on another disk recently. Very annoying as the transfer could have been quite good without this.

infinite_loop · 07-11-2009, 7:27 PM

This film was a total disaster. Shot with an inappropriate and out of date digital video system giving burnout and grain, badly characterised, confusing editing, and the worst soundtrack to come out of hollywood for decades. I've read a lot of insider info about the mix of the film and it's apparent that Mann, a once great filmmaker, is now pretty much deaf but spends his time insisting the re-recording mixers muck about with the dialogue in 0.5db increments that he claims to be able to hear. Despite being mostly deaf. Music was appalingly mixed in too. I thought I was listening to a cutting copy or temp.

The resulting mix is the worst i've ever heard, only really getting better in the last reel where it came alive again. Not a chance I would waste any time or money on the BR.

Smurfin · 07-11-2009, 7:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by infinite_loop

This film was a total disaster. Shot with an inappropriate and out of date digital video system giving burnout and grain, badly characterised, confusing editing, and the worst soundtrack to come out of hollywood for decades. I've read a lot of insider info about the mix of the film and it's apparent that Mann, a once great filmmaker, is now pretty much deaf but spends his time insisting the re-recording mixers muck about with the dialogue in 0.5db increments that he claims to be able to hear. Despite being mostly deaf. Music was appalingly mixed in too. I thought I was listening to a cutting copy or temp.

The resulting mix is the worst i've ever heard, only really getting better in the last reel where it came alive again. Not a chance I would waste any time or money on the BR.

Interesting, didn't know that about Mann, but I fear you may be right! His last 2 movies have had the dialogue mixed very badly....

bjd · 07-11-2009, 8:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by infinite_loop

This film was a total disaster. Shot with an inappropriate and out of date digital video system giving burnout and grain, badly characterised, confusing editing, and the worst soundtrack to come out of hollywood for decades. I've read a lot of insider info about the mix of the film and it's apparent that Mann, a once great filmmaker, is now pretty much deaf but spends his time insisting the re-recording mixers muck about with the dialogue in 0.5db increments that he claims to be able to hear. Despite being mostly deaf. Music was appalingly mixed in too. I thought I was listening to a cutting copy or temp.

The resulting mix is the worst i've ever heard, only really getting better in the last reel where it came alive again. Not a chance I would waste any time or money on the BR.

I actually checked my amp during this movie, as I thought some of the channels were dropping in and out. I found early dialogue virtually unintelligible, with various other channels going from dead silence to overkill. A steaming pile of poo.

Cheers

Brian

confused88 · 07-11-2009, 9:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by infinite_loop

Shot with an inappropriate and out of date digital video system giving burnout and grain

Would you care to expand a little on that ?

infinite_loop · 08-11-2009, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by confused88

Would you care to expand a little on that ?

Best I could fathom, it was shot on CineAlta, the old Sony HDCam cameras that were first experimented with on Phantom Menace, but with filmy lenses and hardware. I thought it looked appalling. There's a chase scene I recall where Depp's in a car and you can see the sky out of the window - only you can't, it's a completely burnt out white sheet of nothing. Compare & contrast with another recent film which was of a similar period - Changeling - what looked like it was actually a period piece? Awful choice. If they had to shoot digital, they should have used Red.

bosque · 08-11-2009, 10:51 AM

A lot of this seemd very similar to Mann's earlier movies (i.e. during the first break-out scene of Dillinger's men asks a guard if he is eye-ballin' him and attacks him just like the Waingro scene at the start of Heat) but was still very enjoyable, nothing like as bad or dull as people have said. The re-creation of 1930's locations was probably the best thing about the movie. On my copy the PQ was pin-sharp and almost exactly the same as it lookd at the cinema, a very good transfer to HD.

Jack burton · 09-11-2009, 2:41 PM

Watched this for the first time the other night.I did enjoy it but the PQ and AQ was a big let down.The pq in many night shots became blockly and detail was lost even in close ups.Day times scenes were great but nightime and indoor was average at best.All so the grain never looked natural.It looked like it was put in afterwards and in many shots it looks weird.Very strange choices by Mann on many shots and like i said the indoor and many night time shots had me checking my tv to make sure it was'nt on the blink.

The AQ is even worse and proberly the worst i have listened to on blu ray.Again it had me thinking my equiment was broke.Bullets shattering my windows and speech felt like it was on mute.At one point thought about putting subtitles on.
Overall some great shots on blu when outside or in a very bright indoor area but night times shots all over the place from great to the down right awful.Watched Braveheart straight after and it brought me back to my wow factor with my blu ray watching.

confused88 · 09-11-2009, 3:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bosque

A lot of this seemd very similar to Mann's earlier movies (i.e. during the first break-out scene of Dillinger's men asks a guard if he is eye-ballin' him and attacks him just like the Waingro scene at the start of Heat) but was still very enjoyable, nothing like as bad or dull as people have said. The re-creation of 1930's locations was probably the best thing about the movie. On my copy the PQ was pin-sharp and almost exactly the same as it lookd at the cinema, a very good transfer to HD.

Not every film looks great to me at the Cinema. Some look fantastic but some look like VHS on a big screen. OK maybe dvd...
Should there be more consistency when and if everything goes digital?

Basil Plumley · 23-11-2009, 1:50 AM

Saw this at my favourite cinema - screen 1 at the Empire in Leicester Square where it was shown digitally and to say it was stunning is like saying I'm a little happy that the twins are out of the X Factor - it was perfect - every pore on every face and every stitch on every suit was visible.

But I had friends over to watch this on my second favourite cinema - screen 1 at the Plumleyplex - and I've never been so embarassed in my life!
My friend (who has been round on several occassions to watch films with "the lads") brought his wife round - and he actually asked me if there was something wrong with my kit...

One minute I was reaching for the remote to turn the volume up to hear what they were saying, the next rushing for it to turn it down as voices boomed from the centre speaker...

There has to be something wrong with the authoring of this disc somewhere down the line - I'll be dropping the company an e-mail tomorrow to see if they plan on doing anything about it.

Basil Plumley · 03-12-2009, 11:49 AM

OK - further proof if any were needed that the reviews here are probably the most reliable on the net...over at Blu-ray.com, they've just reviewed this and have given scores of 4/5 for video (and then rip it apart in the actual write up...) and 4.5/5 for audio...quoting

Quote:

Originally Posted by someone who obviously gets paid to write good reviews at another site

Even so, dialogue is clean and intelligible,

...

mentasm · 03-12-2009, 1:59 PM

Not that I pay any attention to the reviews on that site, but it does make me wonder if there is a difference between the US and UK discs.

DrGekko · 07-12-2009, 10:37 AM

Where's the review please??? I keep clicking "the movie" link but it simply lists the titles and formats.

Simon Crust · 07-12-2009, 10:55 AM

We've had a slight bug this morning, all is working fine now

Thanks

Simon

Turbo Dragon · 02-02-2010, 12:40 PM

Thank you for confirming I'm not crazy!

Just watched this on BD last night and I had the same thoughts about the audio, had it loud enough to hear the speech track and my eyes were bleeding when the bullets started

Adjusting Cine filters and dynamic compressions did nothing to aleviate, and manually tweaking the levels on my channels couldnt help. I ended up with subtiitles on for some bits so couldnt really get into the film.

Short of applying a very harsh compressor across the outputs and flatten the whole thing , I am at a loss as to how to solve this one. Definatley NOT a recommendation

Excellent review

paulmach1 · 05-02-2010, 11:58 PM

I agree with the majority, the speech vs action levels were completely mismatched. I have a bit of a hearing problem but I can manage to hear most things but watching Public Enemies I DID use the subtitles, it was that bad. American accents, particularly from the south, can be difficult to comprehend, but I've never had to resort to subtitles before. Picture wise PE was nothing special, I doubt there would be anything to gain from a normal DVD copy over a bluray.
I didn't know the story of John Dillinger but watching this version of his life was completely boring, no excitement or emotion at all. Compare PE to a period film like Cinderella Man ( a film I WOULD like to see on bluray) and there is no comparison at all.
All said I wouldn't recommend Public Enemies
1/10

jimmyboy1975 · 08-02-2010, 10:44 AM

I watched this film on DVD and thought the dialogue was very difficult to hear, especially in the forst half of the film, the volume kept going up and down and it was muffled and difficult to understand. As I was watching I wish I'd watched it on Blu Ray although after reading the BD review they both seem to have the same problems too. Had to turn down the volume on my amp when there were gunshots.