Striking Distance

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
#29529
102 Minutes

List Price: $28.95 (Check Price at Amazon.com)

This movie is also available from Amazon on DVD and video on demand (rental or purchase).

Available 6/16/2009

Disc Contents

• Upfront Ads - can be skipped (HD, DD 5.1)
  • The International (2:09)
  • Lakeview Terrace (2:28)
  • The Da Vinci Code Extended Cut (1:06)
• Movie
• Previews (HD, DD 5.1, MPEG-2)
  
  • The International (2:09)
  • Lakeview Terrace (2:28)
  • The Da Vinci Code Extended Cut (1:06)
  • Tears of the Sun (2:30)
  • Vantage Point (2:32)
  • 88 Minutes (2:31)
• BD-Live
  • "Spotlight" Extras
    • Featurette for The International (3:07, HD, AVC)
    • Trailer for Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2:17, HD, AVC)
    • Overview of Blu-ray extras on Glory Blu-ray Disc (1:53, HD, AVC)
  • Trailers
    • "The Informers" in Theaters
    • "Blood" in Theaters
    • "The International" on Blu-ray
    • "Fired Up" on Blu-ray
    • "A River Runs Through It" on Blu-ray
    • "Final Fantasy VII" on Blu-ray
    • "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" on Blu-ray
    • "Waltz with Bashir" on Blu-ray
    • "The Da Vinci Code Extended Cut" on Blu-ray

About the Movie

Bruce Willis plays a 5th generation cop in Pittsburgh that goes against the blue grain with a conviction that a cop is a serial killer that is also responsible for killing his father during a high speed pursuit. Now a river rescue officer, he launches an unauthorized murder investigation when women that he knew in the past wind up killed and dumped in the river for him to find.

How Does it Look?

The picture quality was free of any annoying artifacts, but it isn't as good as other recent Blu-ray releases. It exhibited softness at times that reminded me of something that would be on HBO-HD.

How Does it Sound?

The Dolby TrueHD lossless audio soundtrack is good, but not all that remarkable. I'm glad to see a lossless soundtrack, as every Blu-ray disc should offer the best audio options possible. Every note of the sometimes-cheesy score is delivered with great fidelity!

Extras

I like to see the theatrical trailer included with movies, so I was disappointed that one was not included here.

BD-Live

The BD-Live section connects to the Sony Pictures BD-Live server pretty quickly. However, anyone looking for content that extends the viewing experience of this movie will be disappointed. The only item in the BD-Live section connected to this movie was the ability to register the disc with Sony's rewards program.

The "Spotlight" section serves to advertise other Sony titles on Blu-ray, which is interesting, but nothing that couldn't be had by other means. The promos were timely, as they were pitching movies that were being released on Blu-ray disc at this time. Time will tell if that information is updated to reflect new releases whenever it is accessed.

The "Previews" section contains trailers for a variety of Sony movies, but not one for this movie. It was nice to see the option for both HD and SD downloads, instead of the windowboxed SD downloads that some other BD-Live sections provide as the only choice.

The BD-Live section for this title does little to advance the feature or show off its potential. It appears that we'll be waiting longer for Sony to innovate in this space.

Other Aspects

This disc is BD-J formatted, and our PlayStation 3 was not able to support auto-resuming the movie. Bookmarking is supported, but it would be nice for the disc to recognize that we stopped playing when the disc was stopped last, and offer to pick up where we left off (like some of Disney's recent releases are doing).

Conclusion

As Bruce Willis action movies go, this isn't one of his best. I remember referring to this as "Die Wetter" when it first appeared in theaters, but that reference diminishes the quality of the Die Hard series. Even the least of those movies was better than this one. This makes for a good rental, but not a purchase unless you really like the movie or you are trying to round out your Bruce Willis movie collection.

Recommended Reading

Don't just take our word for it, check out these resources for more reviews of the movie and of the disc.

• Movie Reviews
  • Our Featured Movie Critic
    
• Blu-ray Reviews
  • Drew Taylor of High Def Digest
  • James Plath of DVDTown

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