- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Resolution: 1080p/24
- Audio Codec: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
- Subtitles: N/A
- Rating: Not Rated
- Region: A
- Discs: 1
- Studio: Anchor Bay
- Blu-ray Release Date: January 18, 2011
- List Price: $17.98
[amazon-product align=”right”]B00465I16A[/amazon-product]
BestBuy.com:
Purchase Fire on the Amazon on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:2/5]
The Film
[Rating:1/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:2.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:3/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0.5/5]
Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures
(Screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG thus are meant as a general representation of the content and do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)
The Film
[Rating:1/5]
In 1991, shortly before her big breakthrough role in Speed, Sandra Bullock made this then little known film, Fire on the Amazon. The awful film, with a horrendous plot, stilted dialogue, and one-dimensional characters, has since then gone on to internet notoriety, becoming famous, or infamous, for one thing and one thing alone, a steamy love scene between Bullock and her leading man Craig Sheffer, in which she shows a lot more skin than she has been subsequently known for. But relax horn-dogs, there’s no actual nudity here, at least nothing that I would classify as nudity.
So, the main “story” of the film is two Americans, Alyssa Rothman (Bullock), an environmental activist, and R.J. (Sheffer), a photojournalist, in Bolivia run afoul of some bad characters when they begin investigating the murder of a cattle rancher fighting against the razing of the rain forest for profit. Things get rather dangerous for the pair, they go traipsing through the jungle, start falling in love, and so on. It’s 78-minutes of terribly acted and scripted drama. It takes a lot to drain the charm out of Sandra Bullock, but the filmmakers certainly succeeded in this case. Thank goodness for her and her career that Speed did come along.
Video Quality
[Rating:2.5/5]
Just as the film itself is rather awful and the effort for this Blu-ray package feels nearly nonexistent with its lack of any real supplements and absence of subtitles and additional audio tracks beyond the main English soundtrack, this AVC/MPEG-4 encoding seems like a weak effort as well. It looks like it was dragged out of the vaults, had the least bit of processing applied to make it somewhat presentable in high definition and then slapped onto Blu-ray. You won’t find too many enthusiasts clamoring over this soft, noisy looking encoding that suffers at every turn from source damage, poor flesh tones, and dim overall brightness.
Audio Quality
[Rating:3/5]
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack is only mildly more acceptable than the video transfer. It’s the sole option available and it offers up clean dialogue, some mild stereo panning across the front and a bit of ambience panned through the surrounds. There is a hint of discrete information in the surround channels, but they are filled with mostly subtle atmospherics. The high frequencies in the film’s score, however, sound a bit grungy and to become a tinge fatiguing after awhile.
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0.5/5]
The sole “supplement” is the original theatrical trailer (1.78:1; 480i/60).
The Definitive Word
Overall:
[Rating:2/5]
It’s obvious that this film is being released to Blu-ray solely for the voyeuristic crowd, but this is one that was perhaps left to the annals of history or, strike that, best forgotten entirely and wiped off the face of the Earth. Skip it.
Additional Screen Captures:
[amazon-product align=”right”]B00465I16A[/amazon-product]
BestBuy.com:
Purchase Fire on the Amazon on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:2/5]
The Film
[Rating:1/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:2.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:3/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0.5/5]
