General Evans Above Archive for Jun 29, 2022

Edge of Tomorrow 4K review

Jun 29, 2022 – permalink

Doug Liman’s 2014 sci-fi action film Edge of Tomorrow stars Tom Cruise as Major William Cage. Though mostly a desk jockey with limited combat experience, he is made to join a battle against aliens and finds himself stuck in a time loop. Based on the 2004 Japanese novel All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, it also stars Emily Blunt as Sergeant Rita Vrataski, a celebrated hero in his new unit. Bill Paxton and Brendan Gleeson are also in the cast. The film was released to positive reviews and grossed over $370 million US. Warner Brothers Home Entertainment has now released a 4K version, which I had a chance to review. The WB likes disclaimers, so here goes: Though Warner Brothers provided me with a copy of this release to review, the thoughts and opinions below are mine.

The 2160p HEVC / H.265 encoded upscaled 4K transfer with HDR10 is presented in a 2.40:1 aspect ratio. The video presentation is sharp with great detail on facial textures, textiles and locations. The HDR10 really improves the colour palette with the highlights of flames and explosions looking great and the earthier tones looking very natural. The cinematography aesthetic for this film leans towards steely blues and greys, but the increased gradients even give those hues a chance to shine. Black levels are deep and there’s good detail in the shadows but sometimes, especially near the end of the film, the blacks tend to border on crushing. Digital noise and compression artifacts are generally absent.

As with many big budget action flicks trying to succeed in multiple markets, Edge of Tomorrow has a lot of audio choices. There’s an English Dolby Atmos soundtrack which folds back to Dolby TrueHD 7.1. There’s also an English Descriptive Audio track as well as a French (Canadian) and German DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track and French, Italian, Spanish (Castilian and Latin American), Chinese, Czech, Hindi, Hungarian, Polish and Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are available in English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Dutch, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, Spanish (Castilian and Latin American), Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Roman, and Swedish. The Atmos track makes good use of the height speakers with explosions, aliens and weapons fire inhabiting the height channels. The surrounds enlist you into the action and your subwoofer adds the needed oomph for battle scenes. The score is powerful and dynamic and dialogue is clear, centred and well prioritized in the mix.

The Edge of Tomorrow 4K comes with a digital code and the 2014 Blu-ray release of the film, which is where you’ll find the extras. There’s an introductory featurette hosted by Liman which includes an alternate cut of the Operation Downfall sequences, a look at the armor and arms by the cast and crew, a look at the aliens, deleted scenes and a 43 minute behind-the-scenes doc.

The Edge of Tomorrow combines a great video presentation with an excellent audio presentation and adds in a nice selection of extras on the included Blu-ray. A great cast and great action. Recommended.