Despite being a dialogue-driven drama, this is a DTS-HD Master mix worth listening to. Ambiance is outstanding. Camera flashes can be heard as reporters take their photos, trains are accurately tracked in each channel as the scene changes, cars on the street honk horns, and indoor crowd scenes envelope the entire sound field. While there is little in the way of work for the subwoofer, the surround and stereo channels are constantly active, making this a pleasant surprise. ![]()
Despite a few Oscar nods, Universal releases a bare bones Blu-ray, undoubtedly for a re-release later should this win anything. "Partners in Crime" is a 13 minute making-of that delves into some of the real life details of the case, but it’s too short to make much of an impact. "The Common Thread" is about Jolie’s transformation into Collins, and like the other featurette, doesn’t do much at under five minutes.
Universal’s aggravating U-Control is used here, a ridiculous interactive feature that needs to die a quick death. There are three separate threads to this presentation, including the typical picture-in-picture featurettes that rarely last more than a minute. Archives includes original documents pertaining to the case, arguably the best of the three options. Finally, "LA Then and Now" is a comparison of the city now as opposed to what it looks like in the film.
All of these require flipping to a specific section of the movie to access, waiting for an icon to pop up, and then hitting a button to indicate you want to see it. If you have the feature on, why wouldn’t you want to see it? It’s annoying to select, say, an archive feature, select the scene, wait for it to load, and then see a single picture. Wow. That’s interactivity at its worst. Please Universal, dump U-Control. Finally, the disc is BD-Live enabled, but not currently working as of this writing. ![]()
Ron Howard was originally set to direct, but a scheduling conflict prevented him from doing so. Instead, he took on a producer role and suggested Angelina Jolie for the lead role despite Hilary Swank and Reese Witherspoon close to being cast.








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