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Brothers in Arms
R2 - United Kingdom - Signature Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Rick Curzon (1st February 2020). |
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The Film
 BROTHERS IN ARMS is a tense and high octane thriller from the producer of Nightcrawler. Cal (Jai Courtney: Suicide Squad) is a by-the-book police officer who, along with his rowdy and inseparable group of childhood friends, makes ends meet as a Marine Corps reservist. When his reckless younger half-brother, Oyster (Nat Wolff: The Fault in our Stars), is arrested after a bar fight and given an unfair prison sentence, Cal – driven by his loyalty to family and fierce code of honour – fights for Oyster (Nat Wolff) in this gripping tale of brotherhood and sacrifice.
Video
A pretty standard drama about camaraderie in the face of adversity gets the standard defintion treatment from Signature Entertainment in the UK. A modern digitally shot production this looks perfectly decent on DVD. The image is stable, if a tad soft and colours are well rendered. The colour palette is somewhat muted favouring a browny, earthy tone and naturalistic overall. Black levels are generally deep and rich with some signs of shadow detail although not being in HD means the image could be sharper and better defined. Contrast is supportive and has no noticeable flaws like blow out highlights and gamma is well balanced with clean whites. There's no signs of digital tinkering and I didn't notice any egregious standard definition compression artefacts so the encode seems decent enough. This disc gets the job done but as with every DVD there is room for the improvement provided by a full Blu-ray or 4K rendering. At the budget price it's worth the money so why carp. PAL / 2.4:1 / 95:42
Audio
English Dolby Digital 5.1 English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo Subtitles: None This being an action film the sound field is very well used with plenty of action in the surrounds and the LFE is pretty strong with the subwoofer being engaged at opportune moments. Obviously the 5.1 is the way to go with subtly more range and oomph. No subtitles is just not acceptable in 2020.
Extras
The US Blu-ray under the original title of Semper Fi has a commentary, 22 minutes of featuretes and six minutes of deleted scenes. Not much but a lot better than we have here. Startup Trailers: - We Die Young (1:49) - Night Hunter (2:26) Nothing of note here.
Packaging
Standard DVD keepcase.
Overall
Straightforward standard def virtually barebones disc. Image and sound get the job done and are without any major issues. The film is competent but offers little that is new and there are no extras to speak of. Buyers should note that it is yet another commerciallised retitling of an American film, in this case the original title is Semper Fi.
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