Ultra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) finds himself in Italy suffering a bout of amnesia. When he awakes, he’s in a strange hospital room where an attractive doctor, Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), is caring for him and tries to explain how he ended up in Florence, Italy. Before you know it, an assassin attacks the hospital, and Langdon and Brooks are on the run trying to figure out who wants him dead. As the pieces fall into place, Langdon discovers he’s on the hunt for Dante-inspired clues leading the pair on a chase to save the world from a crazy billionaire (Ben Foster) who has a diabolical plan for the planet.

This is the third film of a trilogy of movies based upon Dan Brown’s popular best-selling novels. Much like the previous two films, there are many head-scratching moments as Langdon is able to solve complex anagrams and pull tidbits of information from ancient texts as if he’s a walking version of Google, which can make it hard for the audience to follow along. This is the weakest of the three films, but it still has its moments, especially if you like Hanks and Jones—which I do.

As with most of Sony’s 4K releases, this one looks excellent. The principle photography was captured using a mix of 3.4K and 6K cameras and downrezed to 2K for its theatrical release, then upscaled to 4K here. One would think all of those conversions would have a negative effect on the video quality, but that certainly isn’t the case. Exterior shots of Florence, Venice, and Istanbul are gorgeous and well detailed, skintones are accurate, and fine details in clothing and facial textures show off every thread and pore. Black levels can be a bit murky at times, but the bright environments and the expanded color palette more than compensate.

The Dolby Atmos track is amazingly detailed, especially with an effective use of the overhead effects. When the film starts, Langdon is hit with a hallucination overwhelming his brain, and you feel like you’re inside his head experiencing it as discrete effects flow throughout the room. The best audio segment involves a police drone, which zips in and around the soundstage and will make you duck for cover—this will now be my go-to demo scene for Atmos.

Supplements are housed on the included Blu-ray Disc and comprise nearly 30 minutes of deleted/extended scenes, six featurettes that delve into different aspects of the production, previews, and a UV Digital Copy code.

Blu-Ray
Studio: Sony, 2016
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audio Format: Dolby Atmos / TrueHD 7.1 core
Length: 122 mins.
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Ron Howard
Starring: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Ben Foster