National Treasure: Collector's Edition Blu-ray Review

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Arguably National Treasure should never have been discovered in the first place, it's a disappointing, forgettable re-hash of plenty of better movies with better stories and more adventure. It is a poor-man's Indy. With all that said, it is entertaining for its runtime and if you don't mind the familiarity of almost every single sequence then you are likely to enjoy it for the most part. On Blu-ray the movie comes across with a decent video presentation and a superior aural rendition, along with a nice selection of extras, warranting your making it an addition to your collection, if you enjoyed the movie, that is. Newcomers should beware and be prepared to forgive, Indy this is not.

National Treasure comes to Blu-ray presented with a superior 1080p High Definition video rendition in the movie's original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 widescreen. The picture has superb clarity and excellent detail throughout, with very little noticeable softness, no signs of defects and very little grain indeed. The colour palette is reasonably broad, with a few nice daytime sequences that showcase gorgeous blue skies and deep greenery. The darker crypt-orientated scenes remain reasonably solid, the setting extremely dusty, which does allow for some negligible grain, although for the most part they also look pretty acceptable. Whilst not a spectacular presentation, the likes of which you could use to showcase off your Home Entertainment equipment, it is still pretty special and clearly superior to the SD-DVD alternative.

The movie comes complete with a superb uncompressed PCM 5.1 track that pulls no punches. Dialogue, whether the whispering of discoveries or the shouting for help, comes across crisply and clearly, predominantly across the fronts and centre channels. Effects range from the smaller ambient touches that create a suitably environment for the proceedings, to some minor explosive sequences and gunshots, which are given good dynamic presentation across the surrounds. The score is a little over-the-top (often giving the impression that the on-screen action is more exciting than it clearly is) but probably represents the best aspect of what is already a superior aural presentation.