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Ladder 49
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Buena Vista Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Sam Scott (6th March 2007). |
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The Film
 Although I have always had the utmost respect for firefighters, it is something I was never interested in as a possible career choice. They do a hell of a lot of training to save peoples lives, yet when they are called out, it is usually a hoax call, most probably by kids who don't realise that by making a hoax call, another real emergency might not be getting the attention is deserves. Whilst I have never really thought much about firefighters, after the devastating events of 9/11, who can't help but thank them for what they do and the photographs in the newspapers of the firemen walking into the World Trade Centre to try and help others really put it into the forefront of my mind. We've never really had a great deal of films about firefighters and the most famous to date is probably 1991's Backdraft, but in 2004, an all star cast pulled together for Ladder 49. Ladder 49 focuses on one firefighter in particular, Jack Morrison (Joaquin Phoenix - Walk The Line), who has been put into hospital with critical injuries after a blaze he attended. From here we learn his story from his first day, right through to the present, all told via various flashbacks. As Jack gets more and more involved with the job, getting close to his workmates including boss Captain Mike Kennedy (John Travolta - Grease, The General's Daughter), he neglects his family life without realising. We follow him as he gets into vdifferent situations, through very bad times, to the good such as when he gets married to Linda (Jacinda Barrett - Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason). When Ladder 49 first came out a few years back, it got hammeredby the critics who all said it was a complete waste of time. However, as I usually disagree with most reviews, I picked it up when I saw it cheap. After watching it I was impressed and found the slating it got rather overstated. The acting, especially by Phoenix is excellent, and even Travolta manages to put in a good performance which is quite rare for him these days. The story manages to grip you and take you on (and I hate this phrase), a rollercoaster ride, as one minute you're laughing, the next you've got a tear in your eye. Many people make comparisons between this and Backdraft, but I assure you that they are completely different in what they set out to do. The film has a couple of loose ends which don't really get tied up, but it's still a great film, worthy of a watch.
Video
Buena Vista have given us a 1080p transfer using AVC MPEG-4 compression set at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Before sitting down to watch this film, I looked at my notes from my excel file and noticed I had written about edge enhancement and some poor contrast for the previous DVD release. I am pleased to announce that the edge enhancement has now been erradicated but it should be noted the picture still suffers from some minor grain.
Audio
Buena Vista have offered up 4 audio tracks: English PCM 5.1, English Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1 and Spanis Dolby Digital 5.1. For the sake of this review I watched the film with the PCM track and it was pretty darn good. The surround noise during scenes where fire is burning up a building sounds so good you can almost feel yourself burn up. Every little thing that could be used to effect was and I have no complaints. Subtitles are available in English HoH, French and Spanish.
Extras
We start off the extras with an [i>audio commentary[/i> with director Jay Russell and editor Bud S. Smith. The commentary runs OK until about halfway through when they seem to run out of steam. Whilst I enjoy a technical commentary as much as the next guy a few more stories from the set would've been nice. The commentary is pretty average all round. Next up is a featurette entitled The Making Of Ladder 49, which is in itself broken down into three parts: - On Location - Fire Academy: Training The Actors - Anatomy of a Scene: The Warehouse Fire Although the whole thing is a little short to go to in-depth, the people involved do a god enough job to give us a taste of what had to happen to make certain elements of the film. Next is another featurette, Everyday Heroes, which is without a doubt the best extra on the disc as we hear from real-life firefighters about their line of work. Excellent! Then we have some deleted scenes and to be honest they are barely worth talking about, let alone watching. All of them are very slow moving and it was definately a good decision to cut them from a film that already runs almost two hours. The scenes are as follows: - Lunch Room Conversations (3.12) - Jack and Linda's First Date (3.25) - Captain Tony Arrives (2.34) - Ray's Subplot (3.00) - 9-11 (1.48) We finish off with a mediocre music video and some bonus trailers.
Overall
Underrated treat with great picture and sound, but uninteresting extras.
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