Patton [Blu-ray]

The Patton Blu-Ray release is a fantastic remastering. By far one of the best picture quality Blu-Ray releases I've come across to date. Its a wonderful movie with awesome picture quality.

I personally love this movie. My first purchase of this movie was in Betamax and I still love it. I was amazed at the difference in quality with the Blu-ray version. The colors and detail are fantastic. The sound is better, but not as good as you will get from a new action movie. I am very pleased to have this new release and strongly recommend it to any lovers of the movie.

Patton is one of my favorite movies of all time. I was excited to get it on Blu-Ray and have not been disappointed. The transfer is fantastic for such an old film. I am not a Blu-Ray snob who is going to go back and compare DVD quality, but you can notice the difference with Patton. It is worth the price and definitely worth it right now with the But 2, Get 1 sale going on. Add this to your collection today!

First let me start off by saying that I think Patton is one of the greatest movies ever. This is a review of the blue-ray disc and it's over use of DNR (Digital Noise Reduction). The source elements for this movie where shot on 65mm film, so the image should exhibit a very fine grained texture to it. The DNR has made the movie look exceedingly clean to the extent of looking like digital video rather than film. This has caused a softness and lack of detail in the movie.

Want an example? Go to time code 11:59, it shows a wide shot of a battlefield with a dog in the center left. The dog leaps forward, but he halts and jerks back in midair for no reason. The reason for this is the dog is teathered by a leash. It's been virtually erased from the film by "cleaning it up with DNR". In a still frame you can barely discern a thin line attached to the dog. Yes you should see the dog leash, watch your old dvd copy. The blue ray might look good on a small screen but as you go up in screen size more of these problems stand out. This disc doesn't represent the movie's photography and doesn't live up to blue-ray's potential. Film is a medium that the movie artist paints his creation on. With DNR they can change the medium and thus change the movie.

I hope that maybe they will see thier mistake and pull this blue-ray and give us one from the source.

This is one of the very, very few great Hollywood movies about historical events and personalities in which hardly any liberties or revisionist history attempts have been made and yet the unadulterated "true" story is still so dramatic and exciting. This movie is fully deserving of all 8 of the Oscars that it won and is not only among the top 5 war movies that I've ever seen but is also among the top 5 biopics that I've ever seen.

Patton is shown, warts and all, with little attempt made at trying to sugar coat his colourful personality although this movie gives us a chance to see the other side of the story that we get of the man from the sensationalist press of the time. Having served in the military myself, I actually fully appreciated what he did to the cowardly soldier and I know I wouldn't have apologised if it was me but Patton saw the bigger picture and knew that he was needed to continue achieving greater things and so did what he had to which really impressed me. Although the film is almost 3 hours in length, I didn't feel it as that movie is just that good.

As for the DVD, the picture and sound quality is just excellent. The THX Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround option makes the sound quality very good and I couldn't easily find any imperfections with the picture quality making me thoroughly satisfied with this dvd version. Although there are no special features worth mentioning, the picture and sound quality more than make up for this. I can only imagine how much better the Blu-ray version of this film will be given that it is already so good on this standard version. I also appreciated the Anamorphic widescreen effect which ensured that only about a fifth of my widescreen was blacked out unlike the pure letterbox format which means I'd have to squint as only half my screen is utilised. I understand that different people have different opinions about the various formats but for me anamorphic works well enough.

This is a great movie and the dvd is equally as good; great film, great picture and sound quality albeit no special features save an audio essay on Patton's life still make this a great value purchase.

Recommended.