A Knight’s Tale – Blu-ray Disc
January 24, 2008 – 1:58 AM - Posted by: Justin Sluss
EDITORIAL NOTE: With the recent untimely passing of the great actor Heath Ledger, both Brendan and myself felt it would only be fitting to post this and “Brokeback Mountain” reviews as a tribute to Ledger. You will surely be missed!
has an average rating of 6.5 on IMDb
1080p in MPEG-2 on a 25gb disc
PCM 5.1 @4.6Mbps & Dolby Digital
are NOT present on this release!
– 
– 2001
– 132 minutes
– Sony
Buy it for $17.95 @ Amazon.com
The Movie Itself is Directed by Brian Helgeland who also Directed the film “Payback” , even wrote the Screenplay to films like “Man on Fire” and “Mystic River.” This film is set in 14th century Europe when knights were heroes somewhat to equivalent of our modern-day athletes in sports. Our lead character is a boy (at first when we’re introduced to him) named “William Thatcher” (played by the late Heath Ledger) who’s nothing more than a peasant squire that somehow years later when he’s an adult manages to pass himself off as a nobleman. Will is left with little choice when the knight he and his two friends are working for suddenly bites the bucket before a big joust.
Joining our lead character at first are his two friends, “Roland” (played by Mark Addy) and “Wat Falhurst” (played by Alan Tudyk). Soon along their journey they come across a man in the nude who claims to be “Geoffrey Chaucer” (played by Paul Bettany) and explains his situation dishonestly to our main characters. We soon learn he lost everything due to some gambling debts and if he’s supposed to be the real “Chaucer” or not I don’t know. What I do know is this guy can certainly carry a crowd with his introduction of the knight as we see in our first few jousting tournaments Will participates in. Pretty soon the guys encounter a new friend by the name of “Kate” (played by Laura Fraser) who just happens to be a female blacksmith, you got a problem with that? With her on his side helping with armor and the morale of his friends it’s not long before William is taking the jousting world by storm. It’s his goal to win the championship but what stands between him and that dream is a man by the name of “Count Adhemar” (played by Rufus Sewell) who also happens to be a knight competing in the jousting tournament.
Just as he as his eye for the prize of winning the jousting championship as does our main character it’s not long before they also share the same eye for another thing, a girl. “Lady Jocelyn” (played by Shannyn Sossamon) is being courted for marriage by the “Count” yet she’s developed a crush on our main character Will and it’s pretty safe to say he has on her as well. That really sets you up for how the movie plays out, it’s a really funny and at times even romantic film with a weird approach to it. This is the film that really gave the late Heath Ledger a great reputation for being able to carry the lead in a film. It’s a shame that we’ll never see this brilliant talent again. This is honestly in my opinion one of my favorite films he did in his career. This is a Blu-ray Disc title that was released very early on into the existence of the format but still very much worth checking out to this date.
Video Quality on this release is 1080p in MPEG-2 on a BD-25 (25 gigabyte Single-Layered Blu-ray Disc). First thing you have to keep in mind here is that this was a pretty early release to the Blu-ray Disc format as you should be able to tell from the video specs, it uses the older codec MPEG-2. Despite that, this really does look pretty damn good even compared to today’s releases. The comparison between the DVD and the High Def transfer found on this is almost a “night and day” case. This features a good amount of detail that you’ve not seen in the past on DVD release. The black level is solid, color palette and flesh tones are fine. There’s a bit of film grain and noise present throughout the transfer but this I didn’t find to be that bothersome. No signs of compression problems like artifacts or pixilation that I can really find on this release. It’s a major improvement over the DVD version and offers a pretty nice picture quality to be in MPEG-2 and a film over 2 hours long it seems to pull it off. This earns a “4 Star Rating” even being an older title like it is and in a video codec I’m not too fond of, it still looks good.
Audio Quality on this release is in PCM 5.1 @4.6Mbps and Dolby Digital 5.1 @448kbps. Things start off with a great amount of rear channel presence in the surround mix from the very first minute of the film up until the last. Dialogue is delivered perfectly which is very important in a film like this where that witty, sarcastic sense of humor is ever so present. The sounds of horses galloping, knights colliding while jousting and all the various other noises come across absolutely lifelike. This film really has a great Soundtrack with such great artists as Queen and other modern rock numbers that you wouldn’t typically associate with a film in this time period but it works. This earns itself a nice “4 Star Rating” for overall audio quality on this early Blu-ray Disc release.
Bonus Materials are NOT included on this release. Major disappointment here.
— Review written by Justin Sluss
