Reagan - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Reagan



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
A movie about Ronald Reagan is bound to be controversial, much like a film on Jimmy Carter or Lyndon B. Johnson is naturally controversial. To many conservatives he is THE quintessential Republican (at least in our memories, as he wasn’t perfect by ANY stretch of the imagination) and to many Democrats he’s Satan incarnate. So depending on what political side of the aisle someone resides we may see dramatically different responses to the film. That being said, I’m always curious about historical biopics about political figures as I find them incredibly interesting looks back at our past, as well as it allows me to actually critique the film makers themselves on how they craft the image of said figure for the general public’s consumption. Consider it a sort of “barometer” for how they view the political world.

I’m not one to get super involved with the political culture war as a whole, but it’s interesting to watch the fracturing of the film industry as it adapts and expands. In days past if it wasn’t made in Hollywood California it was a guaranteed indie film that wasn’t going to go anywhere. But much like how media landscape, the world has evolved and changed to where the dominance of being in Los Angeles area is not the end all, be all of the film making world. We’re seeing more and more studios and production companies leaving California and heading to places like Nashville and Nevada for tax breaks, effectively breaking the stranglehold that Hollywood had on film making for the last hundred years. Which brings me back to the whole reason WHY I’m fascinated with the fracturing. I’m not SUPER into the whole culture war argument, but it’s no great secret that Hollwood in general is not wildly friendly to conservatives, or portraying conservative political figures in a good light, which means that as the film industry’s locales fracture, so does their hold on tropes and standards that the L.A. culture held over creative control, effectively meaning that with different cultural shifts are going to heavily influence modern day films and we very well may see newer and more diverse takes on historical events, or simply pop culture film making in general.

Straight up before I get going, Reagan heavily lionizes it’s titular character, no way around it. So those who are kind of opposed to him are definitely going to roll their eyes, while those who love him are going to get the “rah rah rah!” slightly jingoistic “BASED upon a true story” hero worship angle on him. The film starts out with a sort of flashback narrative where a modern day soviet acolyte asks his mentor (a Russian spy named Petrovich, played by Jon Voight) just HOW Russia was foiled back in the 1980s, wherein Petrovich explains in great detail how Reagan was the driving force behind their fall. The film dances back to when Reagan was involved in acting after his wartime heroics, marrying his first wife, their fall from grace, and soon his infamous involvement with Nancy (Penelope Ann Miller), and of course his rise to fame as an actor turned Presidential candidate that infamously yelled “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!”.

Reagan acts as a sort of bullet point biopic about the infamous President, taking bits of his life and showing them in chronological order by the unreliable narrator that is Petrovich. As such, it’s sort of bland and a bit dull, while still being solidly interesting enough for most viewers. It’s literally filled to the brim with probably half of the conservative actors in Hollywood (Quaid, Voight, Kevin Sorbo as a cameo, Robert Davi) and interestingly enough, Kevin Dillon in a near unrecognizable makeup getup as Jack Warner of Warner Brothers studios. Parts of the film are quite interesting, but the rest just drags on too long for my tastes. As I just mentioned, the film is sort of a bullet point list of his greatest achievements, but fails to counterbalance it with some of the man’s very distinct flaws and failures. So the end result is a hero that’s a bit TOO squeaky clean to be believable and two dimensional. Dennis Quaid does a solid job as Reagan, but oddly fails to get the mannerisms down JUST right. That being said, Kevin Dillon is CREEPILY accurate to Jack Warner and Penelope Ann Miller is adorable as the well loved Nancy Reagan.




Rating:

Rated PG-13 for violent content and smoking.




Video:

Once again, being a Lionsgate Blu-ray, we see this fall victim to the “rule of 4”, otherwise known as “4/5 for video, 4/5 for audio” that Lionsgate weirdly seems to replicate more often than not. Supposedly shot on Arri Alexa cameras, Reagan looks heavily stylized, with wavering “old school TV” vibes for the opening scenes of the movie, only to alternate into a much more neutral look later on. As we go up through the 1970s things change over to the burnished browns that are meant to imitate that time span, and once more gain a more natural ruddy look as we shift into his time during the 1980s. Clarity is generally really good, with solid detail levels and great colors. I did notice that the heavy amber/brown color grading that came and went seemed to make black levels a tad washed out, but not heavily so. There’s some mild blocking and compression issues for the opening ¼ of the movie, but I’m not deadly certain if that is an intentional stylistic choice, or whether it’s a compression issue after all. But overall this is a very solid disc.









Audio:

Reagan sports a very stable and blue collar type of audio mix, favoring front heavy dialog centric scenes, and sporadic activity in the surround channels, such as when they recreate the assassination attempt on his life in the opening moments of the film, or during the outdoor western scenes on Reagan’s famous California ranch. Otherwise this is a VERY front heavy film that relies on dialog and some minor ambient noises to really get going. It’s got nothing wrong with, but a dialog heavy biopic is just not going to garner the top tier ratings for immersive audio mixes. It does what it does quite well, but naturally doesn’t get too boisterous.











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Final Score:
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Reagan is interesting enough, but unfortunately it’s just not THAT engaging, even though we’re talking about one of the most prolific Presidents of the last 50 years. Everything is there in terms of actors, writers, and such, but falls in that dreaded middle ground of “this isn’t a great film, but it’s not a horrible film either, which tends to be the death sentence for films. The Blu-ray looks and sounds nice, but sadly is devoid of any extras outside of the typical digital copy and DVD copy of the film. Fans of the movie should enjoy the Blu-ray (sadly no 4K UHD), but overall this is what I would consider a rental for most viewers.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Penelope Ann Miller, Jon Voight, Kevin Dillon, Robert Davi
Directed by: Sean McNamara
Written by: Paul Kengor, Howard Klausner
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, English DVS 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
Studio: Lionsgate
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 141 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: November 19th, 2024

Recommendation: Decent Rental