Blast Blu-ray (original) (raw)

MVD Visual | 1997 | 99 min | Rated R | Aug 28, 2018

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Blast

(1997)

Blast Blu-ray despite great video and solid audio falls short as an overall disappointing Blu-ray release

Terrorists attempt to disrupt the Atlanta Olympics by kidnapping the U.S. women's swim team. If their demands are not met, the team will be executed. Only janitor Jack Bryant, a former Olympic gymnast champion of Tae Kwon Do felled by injuries and alcoholism knows of their real plans. And only he, with the guidance of former terrorist-fighter Leo, can stop them.

For more about Blast and the Blast Blu-ray release, see Blast Blu-ray Review published by Jeffrey Kauffman on August 29, 2018 where this Blu-ray release scored 1.5 out of 5.

Director: Albert Pyun
Writer: Albert Pyun
Starring: Linden Ashby

, Andrew Divoff, Kimberly Warren, Rutger Hauer, Norbert Weisser, Tim Thomerson
Producers: Tom Karnowski, Gary Schmoeller

» See full cast & crew

Blast Blu-ray Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, August 29, 2018

Take a gander at the key art right above this review. Look a little familiar? No? What if I said "Yippee kai yay" (with maybe an expletive added to the end just for special emphasis)? Still nothing? Well, then, look here. Now to be fair, it seems that this art was not part of Blast's marketing campaign when it appeared as what I assume was a straight to video release in 1997 (you can see some of that art on our main movie listing page here). It seems positively weird to make Blast seem like a DTV version of Die Hard , with perhaps one salient example being this story does not take place in New York and features virtually no exploding skyscrapers. Instead, I guess Blast might be likened most to outings like Munich, though the difference in quality probably doesn't need to be mentioned. In fact, perhaps Blast shares the most similarities with a film which has evidently not yet been made, though it's been teased several times through the years, and is listed on the IMDb as The Ballad of Richard Jewell. That as yet unrealized production is supposedly going to document the travails of Atlanta Olympics security guard Richard Jewell, who of course was wrongly accused of having planted the devastating bomb that interrupted that Olympics celebration.

Blast makes a couple of textual allusions to that very explosion in a prelude of sorts, which then goes on to posit what might have happened at the Atlanta Olympics had anti-terrorism forces not preemptively stopped planned terrorism activities. So right off the bat, _Blast_wants to be both a "ripped from the headlines" affair as well as a "let's just make stuff up" tale, with the two elements never really merging very effectively.

The baseline "plot" here concerns a bunch of terrorists who take the American women's swim team hostage and broadcast a bunch of demands courtesy of closed circuit cameras which are (of course) conveniently placed around various locations. Unbeknownst to them (at least for a little while), there are a couple of janitors still in the building, and (of course) one of them has a personal connection to the swim team and (of course) has hand to hand combat training to boot. So guess what happens? The fact the Rutger Hauer is billed as a kind of "special guest star" but is consigned to brief interstitial scenes where he can barely be seen in a darkened room portraying an anti-terror expert is just one example of how daffy this film's production "finesse" is.

Blast Blu-ray, Video Quality

Blast is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual's new MVD Marquee imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is a competent looking transfer of a lo-fi production that is often drenched in deep blues (as can be seen in several of the screenshots accompanying this review), and which also features a lot of supposed "closed circuit" material (see screenshots 3 and 9). Aside from that intentionally pixellated material, detail levels are routinely quite good throughout this presentation, though several darker moments suffer from deficits in shadow detail and fine detail. Grain was just a trifle heavier at times than I personally was expecting, but it resolves without any problems and gives this effort a nicely organic looking quality.

Blast Blu-ray, Audio Quality

Perhaps because it was evidently a straight to video release, Blast's LPCM 2.0 track never really goes for the gusto in terms of showy sonics, but there is some noticeable stereo imaging at times in some of the more boisterous sequences that involve fighting. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly, but I found the amplitude on this entire track just a tad anemic, and in fact I kept trying to turn my receiver "up to 11" (so to speak). That said, all elements are rendered well enough, and there are no signs of distortion, dropouts or damage.

Blast Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

Blast's advertised "marquee" stars are Andrew Divoff, Linden Ashby and Kimberly Warren, but my hunch is many fans will probably recognize Rutger Hauer's name before any of the others, and aside from a brief dip in the pool at the very end of the film, he can barely be seen in any of his already brief interstitial appearances earlier in the film. Blast is DTV fodder of typically small ambition and realization, but if there _are_Divoff, Ashby and/or Warren fans out there jonesin' for a chance to see their favorites, this release sports generally solid technical merits.

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