- Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Resolution: 1080p/24
- Audio Codec: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, English 2.0 Descriptive Video Services, French Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
- Region: ABC (Region-Free)
- Rating: PG-13
- Discs: 3 (1 x Blu-ray + 1 x DVD + Digital Copy)
- Studio: Touchstone Pictures/DreamWorks
- Blu-ray Release Date: May 24, 2011
- List Price: $44.99
[amazon-product align=”right”]B004SBQAL0[/amazon-product]
BestBuy.com:
Purchase I Am Number Four on Blu-ray+DVD+Digital Copy at CD Universe
Also available:
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:3.5/5]
The Film
[Rating:2.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:2.5/5]
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:2.5/5]
If angst-ridden teen high school dramas like those found on the “youth” network The CW are your thing, then I Am Number Four will be just the film for you. It’s fitting that the film’s screenplay, based on the young adult novel by Pittacus Lore, would have two writers from TV’s Smallville to its credit. In fact, to paraphrase the very much non-young adult Neil Diamond, except for the names and a few other changes, you talk about I Am Number Four, and the story’s the same one.
Produced by Michael Bay (The Transformers franchise) and directed by D.J. Caruso (Eagle Eye; Disturbia), I Am Number Four is a sci-fi action thriller set in high school. It revolves around John Smith (Alex Pettyfer; Beastly), a young humanoid alien who has been doing his best to blend in, but is now beginning to discover latent “legacies”, superhuman powers that he is struggling to control. John and his watcher Henri (Timothy Olyphant; TV’s Justified) have been on the run on Earth for most of his life, hiding from the frightening alien enemies, the Mogadorians, that destroyed their home world and are now looking to finish off the rest of them living here on Earth. Number Three has been found and killed, and John is Number Four. But for the first time in his life, he doesn’t want to run anymore, he want’s to take a stand in this small town that he has come to call home. It’s the town of his first love Sarah (Diana Agron; TV’s Glee) and his friend, the geeky Sam (Callan McAuliffe; Flipped). He gets a bit of help when the powerful and sexy Number Six (Teresa Palmer; The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) shows up to lend a hand.
The film’s action is slow to build and is hampered by its clichéd look at high school life that we’ve seen a thousand times in many other movies and TV shows. From its high school cliques, jocks versus geeks and overly romanticized looks at teen love, I Am Number Four falls flat. It’s action sequences feel lifted right off the pages of a Smallville episode, only without the charm and history of the Superman legacy.
Video Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
The transfer of I Am Number Four looks very film-like with a nice thin layer of grain, strong color saturation, natural flesh tones and excellent shadow details. The AVC encodement shows no glaring artifacts or post-processing misdeeds and is a really good bit of eye candy to show off any HD display.
Audio Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
As one would expect from a film such as this, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is an aggressive one with hyperactive surround channels, extended low frequencies, and a frenzy of foley effects. With its clean dialogue that manages to stay above the fray, punchy midrange, and relatively calm high frequencies, this is a nice reference quality soundtrack for the home theatre sound system.
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:2.5/5]
There isn’t much here worth watching, but everything is in 1080p, which is always a plus.
The supplements provided with this release are:
- Deleted Scenes with Introductions by Director D.J. Caruso (1.85:1; 1080p/24)
- Becoming Number Six (1.78:1; 1080p/24; 0:11.44) – This is a cool featurette that shows actress Teresa Palmer (“Number Six”) behind the scenes really getting into her role and enjoying doing some of her own stunts.
- Bloopers (1.78:1; 1080p/24; 0:03.15)
- DVD
- Digital Copy – Standard definition digital copy for transfer to Mac/PC or iTunes/Windows Media-compatible devices.
The Definitive Word
Overall:
[Rating:3.5/5]
If you thought Transformers II was bad, then think again. This is just the sort of empty action flick Michael Bay would slap his name onto, it seems. Some eye candy here and there, pretty young faces and a thin story copied from everywhere else. Although this Blu-ray release offers a good home theatre experience, I have to say skip this one.
Additional Screen Captures
–
[amazon-product align=”right”]B004SBQAL0[/amazon-product]
BestBuy.com:
Purchase I Am Number Four on Blu-ray+DVD+Digital Copy at CD Universe
Also available:
I Am Number Four 1-disc Blu-ray (Amazon.com)
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:3.5/5]
The Film
[Rating:2.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:2.5/5]
