Thursday, May 13, 2010

BD impressions: The Transporter

11:04 PM / BD Impressions / Comments11 Comments

BD Impressions
Blu-ray

Q: What's funnier than Jason Statham trying to act?

A: Jason Statham trying to do an American accent.

At least he makes up for his lack of skill as a thesp with his physicality and apparent willingness to try pretty much anything. As a writer/producer, Luc Besson has hit on an action movie formula that actually works extremely well, and THE TRANSPORTER adheres pretty strongly to it, but it's not his finest hour. While it's loud, fast and silly in the ways that you would expect, it lacks the the gung-ho violence of TAKEN, the ludicrous excess of DISTRICT 13 or the martial arts razzle-dazzle of DANNY THE DOG (although it's worth pointing out that Pierre Morel and Louis Leterrier, who between them are responsible for these three films, worked on THE TRANSPORTER as cinematographer and art director respectively). Still, though, it's silly fun and I don't think it's trying to be anything more. I've rented the other two TRANSPORTER films as well and will be getting around to them in due course.

Image quality: Remember the early days of BD, when it was being compared very unfavourably against HD DVD in terms of image quality? Discs such as these undoubtedly contributed to the impression of BD as being the inferior format. The delay in getting dual-layer discs replicated reliably and the proliferation of MPEG-2 encodes drew a lot of scorn, but a title like THE TRANSPORTER probably wouldn't have looked any better with a high bit rate AVC encode. This is a miserable-looking disc, lacking definition and baked with noise reduction. And my God, that ringing! It's perhaps not as bad as the US AMERICAN PSYCHO release, but it certainly isn't far off. 4/10

(Note that an underwater sequence at around the middle of the film appears to have been photographed in standard definition. This does not influence the overall score given to the image quality.)

The Transporter
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: UK; region code: B; codec: MPEG-2;
file size: 16.4 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 25.49 Mbit/sec

The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter The Transporter

 
11 Comments

1. David S.H. said:

I know that higher bitrate and file size doesn't automatically equal better image, but you'd think they could have maxed out the 25GB disc, another 7 or 8GB on the file size may have improved things a little. I think most would lose the usual over the top Blu-ray menus and deleted scenes for a better picture. And as most extra features are SD may as well include them on a DVD, if at all.

Well you could fix everything but the american accent I suppose, why in this day and age they still insist on using the US accent as default eludes me. Seems kind of patronizing to the American audience which its aimed at pleasing. Fair enough if they can pull it off, but if its a labored as Statham's a slight tweak in the script is in order.

(Posted on Friday, May 14, 2010 at 1:03 AM)

2. FoxyMulder said:

I don't think increasing bitrate would help, i have seen films which only use 16 to 18GB of the disc which having a slightly longer running time looking much better than this.

I think people look at bitrate and file size a little too much when really you can have a huge bitrate and large file size and still have a crappy looking disc, of course no harm in maxing things out but it's pointless if it doesn't produce a better image and i think the better studio's probably do tests and know what works.

This film is from 2002, IMDB says it does not have a digital intermediate and i wonder if much of the problem with the EE and DNR is baked into the master they are using.

To think that a lot of people complain about the MPEG 2 edition of Predator which at least resembles something approaching film and only a few compression issues near the end spoil the presentation, Predator is good though but this looks crap.

I wonder if Transporter 2 looks as bad. ?

(Posted on Friday, May 14, 2010 at 1:27 AM)

3. FoxyMulder said:

Indeed Poltergeist is 19GB and is much better.

(Posted on Friday, May 14, 2010 at 1:28 AM)

4. FoxyMulder said:

Ok forget the last comment, missed the bit about this being MPEG 2, yeah that is low for MPEG 2 and keeping the quality.

(Posted on Friday, May 14, 2010 at 1:29 AM)

5. Steini said:

The french BD has an AVC encode aswell as being uncut but i have no idea if the transfer looks any better.

(Posted on Friday, May 14, 2010 at 5:42 AM)

6. Brian said:

Jason Statham missed his true vocation playing a Mitchell brother in Eastenders. I wonder if Ross Kemp ever looks at him and thinks "That could have been me!"

(Posted on Friday, May 14, 2010 at 2:53 PM)

7. Melvin the Mop Boy said:

Statham does an American accent in this one? I guess you'd have to be British to spot it... sounded Limey to me.

(Posted on Friday, May 14, 2010 at 4:01 PM)

8. Erik said:

He has an "unspecific" accent. Or at least, is supposed to.

(Posted on Friday, May 14, 2010 at 6:15 PM)

9. Author Profile Page Michael said:

On the subject of image quality, I don't see anything that would suggest that a higher bit rate would have made things any better. I couldn't spot any compression problems - and there's so little definition in the image to begin with that I'm not surprised.

As for Statham's accent, it's made clear that his character was in the US military prior to becoming a driver for hire, so he's definitely meant to be American. He sort of slides between Cockney and Brooklyn - very surreal. Presumably to the all-French crew his accent seemed perfectly convincing... just as I would imagine most English speakers would struggle to pick out the differences between (for example) Parisian and Québéqois French accents.

(Posted on Friday, May 14, 2010 at 10:56 PM)

10. Dirk Diggler said:

I have the French BDs of Transporter 1 & 2 and they look very nice, particularly part 2.

(Posted on Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 11:29 PM)

11. Neil (B$B) said:

"I've rented the other two TRANSPORTER films as well and will be getting around to them in due course."

^ Ha, they get successively worse. Trust me, this first film is a classic if only compared to what came later.

(Posted on Monday, May 31, 2010 at 11:03 PM)

 
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