Incendiary – Blu-ray Disc Review

April 30, 2009 – 12:09 am - Posted by: Brendan Surpless

Tags: Ewan McGregor, Image Entertainment, Matthew Macfadyen, Michelle Williams, Nicholas Gleaves, Sharon Maguire

has an average rating of 6.2 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 25gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
are too brief
–
– 2008
– 100 minutes
– Image Entertainment
–
This uses 19.5GB for the movie out of 19.9GB total.
Street Date: May 5th, 2009

Overall Verdict – Save it for a Rental

Buy it for $24.49 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by: Brendan Surpless —

Trailer:



The Movie Itself is directed by Sharon Maguire (known for “Bridget Jones Diary“). “Incendiary” tells the story of a young mother (Michelle Williams and her family consisting of her husband and her son (Sidney Johnston). One day when her husband (an emergency bomb specialist) is away, the young mother begins speaking to a man named Jasper Black (Ewan McGregor), whom she secretly is having an affair with. Her husband and son are particular fans of the local London football team, so they decide to attend a game one day. Moving to the actual day of the game, the young mother meets up with Jasper. The two are watching TV when they hear that a terrible bombing has occurred at the football stadium where her husband and son were. Searching for an answers to what actually happened, the young mother tries to sort out all the puzzles all while beginning to fall for another man by the name of Terrence (Matthew Macfayden). What results is a film that is completely odd and basically jumps all over the place not really ever deciding what to focus on.

The main issue with “Incendiary” is that the plot is fairly straight forward but the movie never can quite pick what it wants us to focus on. We understand that a major bombing has happened and thousands of people have died. And it’s understandable that Williams character wants some clarification as to how this incident that killed her husband and son occurred. But then we’re told of the aforementioned man Terrence and what exactly he does. Then, through a series of events, we’re basically told to think that Terrence may have known that the attack was going to occur but did nothing to stop said attack. And let’s not forget the character of Williams. It’s obvious that the filmmakers didn’t care enough about her to not even give her a name (she’s billed on iMDB as ‘Young Mother’). This isn’t a huge reason why I’m giving the film the rating I am, but more that it shows that the filmmakers didn’t ever really known what they exactly wanted to accomplish. Perhaps at one point they were going have McGregor play her role only as a father figure. After all he’s actually given a name.

If there’s one redeeming aspect of “Incendiary“, it’s that the film is shot well (visually) much in thanks to photographer Ben Davis. Davis has a keen eye for the style of London and the happenings of the town. Davis was the cinematographer on “Hannibal Rising“, another well shot film visual (quality wise that’s up for debate). Still as positive an aspect as this might be (as the look of a film is important), “Incendiary” is just all over the place.

Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-25 (25 gigabyte, single-layered Blu-ray Disc) in the 2:40:1 aspect ratio. Fairing better than the below audio, the provided transfer for this film is actually quiet good especially when one considers the relatively low budget the movie had. Of particular quality is the numerous close ups the film has. Even though we do tend to have more of a murky looking color palette (mostly consisting of grays, lower lit colors and a few darker shots), these character close ups do showcase fine detail. This type of detail isn’t ever going to be placed next to the higher ranking discs, but still quite impressive. The film is also beautifully shot by Ben Davis, bringing home the London locale to us. The print, benefiting from being released just last year, is in fine condition with no instance of EE or any video noise. All in all this earns a fine “4 Star Rating“.

Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio.. Featuring a mostly dialogue driven film, “Incendiary” arrives with a good enough DTS-HD track that is probably the best the film will ever sound on any given format. Speaking of dialogue, luckily the dialogue is very intelligible with no instance of drop out or muddle dialogue. Dynamics are fairly flat only really occurring during the explosion sequence. The movie tends to focus on more of a frontal mix. Surrounds are pretty absent as well mostly due to the fact that the movie just doesn’t really ever have that much going on at any given point. All in all this earns a decent “3 Star Rating“.

Bonus Materials on this release are extremely brief.

• Still Gallery: This is broken down into six sections mostly focusing on the cast.
• Trailer: Here the film’s theatrical trailer is shown.

In closing,

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

Screenshots:

NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.

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