Man on Fire – Blu-ray Disc
January 11, 2008 – 1:38 AM - Posted by: Justin Sluss
has an average rating of 7.6 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless @1.5Mbps
ARE NOWHERE TO BE FOUND!
– 
– 2004
– 146 minutes
– FOX
Buy it for $27.95 @ Amazon.com
The Movie Itself is Directed by Tony Scott who’s also done awesome films such as “Deja Vu” , “Domino” and “Top Gun” to just name a few. The first and last of those films are both available on High Definition so it comes with great welcome we see another Tony Scott film released in High Def. The film itself tells a story that I’d be lying if I didn’t say is a bit emotional. It tells a story of a hard-drinking burnt out CIA operative named “John Creasy” (played by Denzel Washington). Creasy has a friend named “Rayburn” (played by Christopher Walken) who lives in Mexico and sets him up with a job.
With the rising amount of kidnappings in the area lately it’s now become common for the wealthy families to have bodyguards for their children. So it’s Creasy who’s recommended by the family lawyer “Jordan” (played by Mickey Rourke) to the father “Samuel Ramos” (played by Marc Anthony) to be the bodyguard to his nine-year-old daughter named “Pita” (played by Dakota Fanning).
The friendship between Creasy and Pita is something truly beautiful to behold but again was not something he planned on happening going in to this job. He didn’t want to get to attached to the girl he was protecting emotionally. It’s with that said that it should come as no surprise that when she is eventually kidnapped he stops at no means to find out and get revenge on everyone involved. That’s all I can really tell you without spoiling any of the film but I will say it’s one of Tony Scott‘s better films. This is a definite MUST SEE FILM!
Video Quality on this release is 1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte Dual-Layered Blu-ray Disc). First off I’d like to say some of Director Tony Scott‘s more recent work like “Domino” has this odd look and feel to it. I personally love it but at the same time I can see how some people are going to misinterpret this as problems in the video transfer. For the most part it is not a problem in the video quality, it’s the visual style to the cinematography.
This film has at times that fast paced action feel to it and it totally uses the BD-50 to achieve what the back of the box lists as a 29Mbps average bitrate in the AVC codec. This is extremely impressive itself alone on paper but what backs it up are things like the solid black level, perfect flesh tones and an amazing color palette with an extremely vibrant feel to it. This holds very little film noise and grain but does suffer from artifacts and pixilation problems in some very rare occasions. Not enough to be very much to complain about so it’s without further ado I give this Blu-ray Disc release a “4 ½ Star Rating” for video quality.
Audio Quality on this release is in DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio @1.5Mbps. You’d expect a Tony Scott film (just like you would really a Michael Bay film as well, I guess) to have an awesome surround 5.1 mix as a given for an action film such as this. Well you’re not going to be disappointed in the slightest bit. This DTS HD 5.1 mix will “dust off” your speakers if you crank your system up. There’s an awesome rear channel presence, the LFE at times will leave the room shaking from the bass and dialogue is delivered clearly through the front channels with no volume adjustment issues at all to worry about.
On a lighter note, this film does have some points in the beginning really where the sound doesn’t really show off as much but the last hour and a half of the film are sure to rock your socks off. This isn’t quite “demo material” but it’s damn pretty close. I was very impressed by this effort in terms of sound quality from Fox, it earns itself a “4 ½ Star Rating.”
Bonus Materials are NOT, I repeat NOT included on this Blu-ray Disc release. This is Fox‘s decision and they chose to pull a “Robocop” on it so I wouldn’t doubt we’ll eventually see them do a special edition release to double dip. LAME effort on the studio’s behalf for this title in the bonus material department.
— Review written by Justin Sluss
