Dark of the Sun Blu Ray Review

4 Stars

Timothy Bodzioney submitted a new blog post

Dark of the Sun Blu Ray Review
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john a hunter

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Looking forward to watching this so thanks for the interesting review and comments.
I like the early Bonds as well as the Craig ones very much as they are set in the "real world" so I wonder what my reactions will be to the interesting points you make!
 

Dick

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A tough and brutal actioner, with good performances. Glad to finally have it! Looks and sounds just fine.
 

benbess

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Timothy Bodzioney submitted a new blog post

Dark of the Sun Blu Ray Review
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Thanks for this detailed and insightful review. I've never seen this movie, but this seems like a reasonable point from the review....

"....When I watch a Tarzan or early James Bond movie, I never think of it taking place in the real world. These movies take place in movieland. One of the reasons I’m not a fan of the newer Bonds is that they purport to take place in the real world while employing cartoon like action sequences. It would be as if the Road Runner cartoons started asking us to take the plight of the Coyote seriously. Dark of the Sun takes place in civil war-ravaged Africa in the 1960s – a very real place with very real human suffering...."

But I'm still interested in this movie and will likely pick it up, esp. since I'm a fan of Jack Cardiff's work as cinematographer.
 
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Ben - it should be seen. It is a very well crafted and acted action piece. I just wish it didn't have such a serious situation as a backdrop. I hate literal minded complaints about movies, but one of the reasons I don't enjoy contemporary superhero movies is because on one hand the audience is expected to accept what's taking place as 'real' but the damage of such large scale wreckage is never addressed.
 

Tom St Jones

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Funny that the previous commenter should mention "contemporary superhero movies" involving scenes of massive property damage - as a prime example of such would be the TRANSFORMERS series, the third installment of which happens to be subtitled "Dark of the Moon" :>]
 
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Winston T. Boogie

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One of the reasons I’m not a fan of the newer Bonds is that they purport to take place in the real world while employing cartoon like action sequences.

I've never felt that any of the Bond films purport to take place in or be reflective of the real world. They are adult fantasy films. The last couple of Craig films (Skyfall and Spectre) were very much about being fantasies and I thought returned more to the classic Bond style.

This film, Dark of the Sun, is a brutal action film. I think it is in line with the time it was made, at which point they were pushing the boundaries of how extreme and/or graphic violence was presented.

It's interesting to note that this film came out after Bonnie and Clyde (1967) but before The Wild Bunch (1969) and probably goes beyond both in terms of how nasty the violence is portrayed.

I know Tarantino loves this film, it does have that sort of sleazy B-movie nastiness he is so into, but this is better than most B-movies probably thanks to Cardiff making it all look like an A-movie.
 

Winston T. Boogie

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I've actually never seen nor read any comments from Cardiff on this film or what he was attempting to achieve with it. To me it has always seemed an action film featuring brutal men set against a brutal backdrop intentionally. It seemed to me that the idea was to have these men descend to their most vicious form and that it is set against this brutality and suffering of the uprising to, basically, make the central characters seem...I'm not sure how to put this...not so hideous for becoming as vicious as they do because they exist in a world of disgusting violence and so commit the same sort of violence to survive in that world. Any way you cut it this film does not paint a pretty picture of humanity.

I don't think it was meant to present any particular political view but rather to depict how men will do horrid things for money, power, and control.

"I made a trip to the Congo, and I met reporters who lived through all of the troubles there [following independence in 1960], and they showed me photographs of the real thing - I wish they hadn't. I remember vividly a photograph of a man with this throat cut in the bath; his head was nearly off and the bath was full of blood. The savagery was unbelievable." - Jack Cardiff
 

Winston T. Boogie

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Besides when it comes to celebrity brawls nothing tops Norman Mailer vs. Rip Torn (either one would destroy Rod or Jim in a fight) these guys know how to throw down.

First, Torn bashes Mailer in the head with a hammer, you can hear the crack of the blow, but Mailer, being super human, does not go down. Instead he grabs Torn and bites a chunk of his ear off and takes him to the ground!

No stuntmen here and all the blood is real. Neither man will even admit he is hurt as they stand there bleeding while women and children scream in horror...

 

rdimucci

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Is the "DTS-HD Master 2.0" sound (1) two-channel mono, (2) front-only stereo, or (3) matrixed surround sound?
 
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Just because Brown is a big guy doesn't mean he knows how to throw a punch. Rod was a professional boxer.

Biting and swinging hammers is not how real men fight.
 

Tommy R

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Before it was released on DVD I bought a used VHS copy years ago, admittedly out of curiosity because it had BOTH Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux, and The Time Machine is my favorite movie of all time. But I ended up really liking this one. I even read the book which I sort of recall being a bit more down to earth, or maybe had more of a subdued tone to it, than the movie. I’ll get the blu-ray at some point soon.
 

Winston T. Boogie

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Just because Brown is a big guy doesn't mean he knows how to throw a punch. Rod was a professional boxer.

Biting and swinging hammers is not how real men fight.

Well, he cracks Mailer in the head with a hammer and Mailer just casually bites off some ear like he is at an all you can eat buffet.

It's like Mailer is one of the undead, knock a chunk of skull loose and he just gets hungry and wants to eat some ear...on his way to the brain I'm sure. What would Rod do in that situation?
 
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Before it was released on DVD I bought a used VHS copy years ago, admittedly out of curiosity because it had BOTH Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux, and The Time Machine is my favorite movie of all time. But I ended up really liking this one. I even read the book which I sort of recall being a bit more down to earth, or maybe had more of a subdued tone to it, than the movie. I’ll get the blu-ray at some point soon.
I intend to read the novel this summer.
 
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