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Monday, September 20, 2010

BD impressions: Hierro

1:01 PM / BD Impressions / 6 Comments

I had reasonably high expectations for this "missing child" horror/thriller, advertised as being from the producers of PAN'S LABYRINTH and THE ORPHANAGE. I wouldn't say I was disappointed as such by the end result, but it's definitely in the shadow of those two superior movies (incidentally, of the two, I actually prefer THE ORPHANAGE). Lead actress Elena Anaya and the slick photography by DP Alejandro Martínez carry what is essentially a very straightforward story that does little to step beyond the clichés associated with movies of this type. As pointed out by Mike Sutton in his review at The Digital Fix, it has a lot in common with Robert Schwentke's Jodie Foster thriller FLIGHTPLAN (including the missing child, the "is she deluded or not?" mother and the slick, clinical photography), but for my money that film made much better use of its premise. HIERRO ultimately does what it sets out to achieve, but when you don't set the bar particularly high in the first place that's not exactly a massive accomplishment.

Image quality: Shot in HD using the Red One camera, HIERRO has what I'd called the "Red One look": low in contrast and rather soft. That said, it's a look that suits the tone of the movie, and the whole thing is lensed with skill and precision. Unfortunately, like its stablemate THE ORPHANAGE, the master from which this disc was sourced appears not to have been full HD (1920x1080), resulting in some prominent stair-stepping artefacts (see the window frames in Example 2) and leading me to suspect that the image could have been sharper if taken from a superior source. There's a heck of a lot of video noise in the darker scenes, but that's digital video for you. I also spotted a couple of isolated instances of banding (look at the sky in Example 9), but there are no other apparent faults beyond these. 7/10

Hierro
studio: Optimum; country: UK; region code: B; codec: AVC;
file size: 24.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 39.04 Mbit/sec

6 Comments

 
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