Into The Blue (Blu-Ray)

...mill big budget actioner. But Into The Blue, certainly registered on my Richter scale. When I recently purchased by Blue Ray DVD player, Into The blue came as a freebie, a taster to wet your appetite I guess. I certainly for one could not think of a more eye watering movie to play on this brand new format.

Jared and Sam are a pair of young lovers who share a love of diving; leading a normal everyday existence they get by, neither of ...
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Having been lured into the movie by the images, you soon become aware of the characters. Jared and Sam are great, truly honest working, and a generally decent couple; both have very high morals and are fully aware of what's right and wrong. Bryce however is a different kettle of fish, a bit slimy, a bit treacherous, and certainly one to go for the money; when it matter however his heart does appear to be in the right place. Amanda bares certain ... more

I don't tend to like the usual run of the mill big budget actioner. But Into The Blue, certainly registered on my Richter scale. When I recently purchased by Blue Ray DVD player, Into The blue came as a freebie, a taster to wet your appetite I guess. I certainly for one could not think of a more eye watering movie to play on this brand new format.

Jared and Sam are a pair of young lovers who share a love of diving; leading a normal everyday existence they get by, neither of them are big money makers. When Bryce & Amanda turn up on the scene however the group discover a sunken plane, stuffed full of drugs. While Jared swears the others away from the wreck, Bryce can only see dollar signs and heads off in search of the illicit cargo. Things go relatively to plan until Bryce and Amanda try to sell the drugs to a local gangster, its here that it transpires that they are trying to sell the drugs back to the original owner.

No sooner had the disc gone in and I was captivated by the beauty of the movie, the colour of the underwater scenes was just breathtaking. It was the beauty of the movie that made me stay, because had I have just read the description I'd certainly not have paid money for this movie.

Having been lured into the movie by the images, you soon become aware of the characters. Jared and Sam are great, truly honest working, and a generally decent couple; both have very high morals and are fully aware of what's right and wrong. Bryce however is a different kettle of fish, a bit slimy, a bit treacherous, and certainly one to go for the money; when it matter however his heart does appear to be in the right place. Amanda bares certain resemblances to Bryce, except that she is none to fussy about what she does, where and with whom. When Bryce wants to go for the drugs, those dollar signs are far too good for her to resist too and she heads off with Bryce to secure part of the stash.

As the movie progresses Jared is forced to change his views, because of the mess that Bryce has caused. An aspect which I certainly can relate too; Sam stays resolute however bowing to change and searching for the only honourable way to get the situation resolved as soon as possible.

The story is very well structured it cover the key things that we teach our children. The beauty of the world, morality, not to steal, not to go into things your told not too. Along side this you get to see the things that happen when you question these issues.
The movie keeps a very steady pace, and you never once feel that you need to let your mind drift off to do something else. You are firmly fixed to the screen. The movie follows a rhythm: romance, action, humour, thriller, horror and then repeats. The movie takes you to things you never really suspected, three quarters of the way into the movie one of the characters meets a terrible fate. I suspect something similar would happen but I never for once suspected death as an outcome.

The only issue of the movie that did annoy me was that it was a bit too predictable; when you meet the character of Bates the meeting is thrown in as a throwaway part of the movie. You see it, but your meant to forget it. Having seen a massive collection of movies I tend to pick up now on the slightest things. I realised that despite how much the movie tried to sidetrack you into forgetting this character, he would ultimately turn out to be the big bad guy at the end, thus ruling over the entire movie.

The performances of the movie are good: Paul Walker heads up the cast as Jared, I'm very impressed with Walker as for the exception of the Fast & Furious movies he tries to become the epitome of the acting chameleon, appearing in Action, kids movies, adventure movies, thrillers and horror titles; better still Paul Walker really can act, and manages to keep his personal life from over shadowing his working career. Despite being a media favourite Jessica Alba (here playing Sam) fails to clock on my radar, I find her completely unappealing and not a great actress. Luckily her appearances on screen are minimal and its Walker and Scott Caan as Bryce who steal the show. On the subject of Caan, his performance is utterly convincing and I'm sure anyone watching the movie will be able to draw comparisons to his character and someone they know.

I'd really love to see the film on DVD, as the Blue Ray edition is just astounding; I suspect viewing from DVD would provide me with the answer as to whether Blue Ray is a better format. Prior to purchase I was always of the mindset that to a certain extent picture quality had reached the level it could go too; but this has changed my views. The disappointment for me with the disc is that there is not one additional feature on the disc. Not even a special feature in the form of a trailer; part of the Blue Ray thing was that the discs could contain so much more as well as enhanced picture quality; however in one of the first release they fail to do this. I remember at the birth of DVD the first few movies released came with hours of additional material on them.
The Blue Ray experience is no different from a loading point of view than DVD, the menus are the same the annoying delayed warnings are the same. What is different though and why I believe that ultimately against DVD Blue Ray will fail is that the discs are far more temperamental than DVD's. If for example you get a small scratch or a fingerprint on a DVD it will still play for the most part. I placed a fingerprint on the underside of this disc and it refused to play, worse still it took me a long time to get the disc ready to play again. I'm reminded of the old 8mm and 16mm movie projectors, it seems that you need to take special care with these discs, its arduous to the extremes of being painful. So take my advise now and don't leave your discs out of the cases.

Into The Blue a phenomenally good movie is available on Blue Ray for £13.99 from Play.com. Or if your after the more conventional and in my view reliable DVD you should be able to pick this up for £4.99 from the same location.  

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