Blu-ray disc 'Battleship'

Battleship Blu-ray
Universal Studios 2012 131 min Rated PG-13 Aug 28, 2012

Battleship (Blu-ray)

ACTION
ADVENTURE
SCI-FI
THRILLER

Video
Codec: MPEG-4 AVC (20.38 Mbps)
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Battleship shoves out to sea with a stunning 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer in tow; one that's as flawless and eye-popping as they come. Colors are bold and beautiful (even if fleshtones are, by design, a touch warm), bright seaworthy blues and menacing alien reds light up the screen, black levels are deep and inky, and contrast is strong and consistent throughout. And if that doesn't distract you from the film's lesser qualities, just wait till you get a load of the detail on this bad boy. Edges are crisp and clean (without an ounce or inch of ringing), textures are remarkably refined, an unobtrusive veneer of grain is present and accounted for at all times, delineation is revealing (be it in the lower decks of a U.S. destroyer or in the bowels of a sunless alien ship), and every last hair, pore, scratch, scrape, fleck of rust and shard of white-hot shrapnel is preserved to perfection. For once, a high definition presentation doesn't make weak CG stand out; one, because there isn't any weak CG to speak of, and two, the seams have been so masterfully merged, regardless of the FX invading any given sequence. Through it all, the explosive and the serene, I didn't detect a single instance of artifacting, crush, aliasing or, really, any other notable anomaly. I caught the slightest hint of exceedingly negligible banding in three shots, but it was gone before I had fully registered what I was seeing. Simply put, Battleship looks fantastic. Even if you hate the movie, you'll be hard pressed to find anything wrong with its high definition presentation...

Director: Peter Berg
Writers: Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber
Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgård, Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker, Tadanobu Asano, Hamish Linklater