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Customer Review
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 June 2014Director John Boorman brings to the screen the Arthurian legend in this 1981 production which draws its material from the works of Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur" version of the story with the part of Merlin played by Scottish born Nicol Williamson who steals every scene he is in, he plays Merlin with great gusto and style, John Boorman creates a film that is both beautiful and frustrating to look at with scenes full of fog and filmed through filters and uses natural light so much so the modern film fan is going to be a bit bemused by the films look but it's look was the director intention but in saying that the transfer in the MPEG-4 AVC codec in full 1080p resolution on this 50GB region free disc leaves a lot to be desired with some scenes looking stunning and others looking very ordinary.
I wish I could report that the audio track was a redeeming feature but the DTS-HD Master audio 5.1 sounds flat erratic although the dialogue is clear and intelligible on the whole but sound effects such as horse hoof beats are reduced to weak and sluggish rumble, the special features are as follows the original trailer and a really dull commentary by director John Boorman.
There are also audio tracks in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and Czech in Dolby Digital Mono, there are also subtitles in the following: - English for the hard of hearing French, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, German and Italian for the hard of hearing.
The film has the running time has been restored to 2hours 20 minutes which is better than the US edited version of 119 minutes at the cinema.
With the current state of affairs with this release it is for die-hard fans of the film and if you can find it at the right price I would recommend for the moment stick to the UK DVD version...
My 3 star rating reflects the quality of the Blu-ray and not the film itself which is at least 4.5....
