The Kingdom Blu-ray Review

The Kingdom

Blu-ray Review
Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Released: November 25, 2008

The Kingdom comes from the director of Friday Night Lights and is a film that packs plenty of action and suspense while bringing in politics and plenty of other topics.  The film stars Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, and Jennifer Garner and has hit the Blu-ray format.

The film is politically charged and does a good job from the start of introducing us to the relationship between the Americans and Saudi Arabia.  You are immediately introduced to all of the terrorism, the innocent people being killed, etc.

You are then introduced to the Saudi government allowing the FBI to send in four investigators to look into the crimes in the country, more specifically one bombing which left innocent people dead.

This is where we are introduced to our four agents done by Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, and Jamie Foxx.

The lead is led by Foxx and arrives with a lot of controversy.  From here, the film explodes out of the gate with tons of action and suspense, in what ends up being two-hours of your life where you do not even want to blink.  Well-worth checking out!

The video quality for the Blu-ray transfer is well-done as it is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen in 1080p.  The video quality could have been improved a bit as I felt that some of the color choices and places of focus were a little miss-guided.  For the most part though we get a great level of detail here as the whole video transfer has a lot of warmth to it.

The audio mix is presented in DTS-HF 5.1 and is extremely impressive with a sound mix that will blow you away in some spots.  The thing that impressed me most with the audio mix was the use of the bass from the subwoofer and the rear channels capturing all of the action going on.  Nothing to complain about here.

You get some respectable extras here from Universal starting out with the commentary track from director Peter Berg.  From there, we move on to 11-minutes of quality deleted scenes presented in HD.  These deleted scenes are really well-done, more than what you would normally expect.

Another cool extra added in is a featurette Creating The Kingdom, as well as another feature focusing on the Freeway Sequence in the film, which you will be introduced to.  Both of these are very well-done and will introduce you to more of the behind-the-scenes stuff to the film.

Universal has also included their U-Control picture-in-picture feature for you to watch along with the film.  This allows you to be introduced to all of the characters in far more detail, as well as some of the other stuff going around in the film.  The U-Control on this disc is extensive and thorough.

The Kingdom on the Blu-ray format is a great release as the film is of high-quality, and the audio and video transfer that accompany it will blow you away in some spots.  With the quality extras included, The Kingdom is highly-recommended!

Movie: 8.8 The Kingdom is a high-octane suspenseful film that will have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.

Video: 9.2 Nothing to complain about here, a high-quality transfer.

Audio: 9.5 The action scenes will rock your home theater with great use of the bass.

Extras: 8.5 The extras are plentiful enough and do a great job of adding to the film with new information.

Final Score: 8.8

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