Elvis - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Elvis



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
There probably been no single rock star that has EVER has the mass popularity as Elvis Presley had in his short years on earth. Now, that’s not to say that there hasn’t been megastars who have made more money, or other people who have influenced rock and roll before him, but he was that magnetic star that took the world by storm when it was looking to shift away from the Conway Twitty era of music, and fused the bluesy world of African American music with a southern charm, effectively kick starting the era of rock n’ roll in the Americas. Much like Ozzy Osbourne, Elvis was the focal point of a whole new generation of music, and due to the fact that no one else had really done it like that before, became an unprecedented success with the entire world glomming onto his hypnotic rhythm and style creating one of the most singular and powerful voices in music of our times.

Then there’s Baz Luhrmann, a director who had a massive climb to fame with his fantasy version of Romeo and Juliet, and then slammed it HUGE with Moulin Rouge back in the early 2000s. He sort of fell off the bandwagon with The Great Gatsby and pretty much dropped out of sight after that, only to come back with a fury this last year. Usually a Baz Luhrmann movie is seen as an unreliable fantasy that infuses classic stories with post modern day art work and styles, but Elvis is all of that, just without the love and fascination that Moulin Rouge or Romeo and Juliet was back in the early 2000s. Elvis is a meandering behemoth of a film, lumbering through 159 minutes (with credits) of a story that peaks at the hour and 45 minute point. And while it does have much of the typical Luhrmann swagger and style, it doesn’t have the narrative juice to really keep you entertained that long.

The story seems less of a biopic about Elvis himself (played by Austin Butler, who actually does a decent job as the king of rock n’ roll), but rather a tell all tale as told through the unreliable eyes of his controversial manager, one Colonel Parker (Tom Hanks in a massive fat suit and a Dutch accent), who is living out the last days of his life looking back at his biggest “success”. Parker was a carnival shark, trying to create a successful “pull” that would (as he says it) pull every last dollar from the rubes and leave them with nothing but a smile on their face. He thinks he’s found it with the country music scene, only to have his world turned upside when he hears a young Elvis Presley making his own brand of Southern music that is nothing the world has ever seen before.

Latching onto the young boy as a new money source, Parker soon finds out that Elvis is NOT just some yokel who he can milk dry and dump in a few years. On stage the young man is a veritable power house, causing women to fall down in fits of ecstasy and every single person latching onto his lascivious (for the time) hip gyrations and crazy stage antics as well. Before long Elvis is shot straight to the top of the heap, surpassing everyone around him and become a veritable cash register for all of those on the same train as him. But as we all know, fame leads to power, women, drugs (due to a medical condition Elvis’s doctor’s infamously pumped him so full of various narcotics to keep him going that he was strung out worse than Motley Crue during the 80s), and with that comes the inevitable fall. A fall that he world only knows so well.

Luhrmann’s fantastical biopic toes a strange line between overt biography, and a fantasy as told through the delusional eyes of his VERY unreliable witness manager. Gone are most of the truly out of time period Baz Luhrmann moments that we’ve all known (except for modern day songs being sung in the background score here and there), and in front and center is a mass hodge podge of flash forwards and flash backs as we see Elvis’s life unfold. Interestingly enough, Austin Butler actually does a pretty good job of playing Mr. Presley, and while he’s not drop dead perfect, I actually got into his playing the king after a good 15 minutes or so. Tom Hanks pulls out a stellar performance as the twisted scrooge mcduck in human form, Colonel Parker, but it’s still not enough to really elevated the film out of the narrative soup that Luhrmann has left us in.




Rating:

Rated PG-13 for substance abuse, strong language, suggestive material and smoking




Video:

Taken from the same master as the 4K UHD disc is taken from, the 1080p Blu-ray may not be able to keep up with it’s bigger brothers, but it still looks fantastic. It offers a very crisp and faithful transfer that uses the same hazy and mildly “off” sharpness that the 4K transfer has, with all of the incredible Baz Luhrmann colors as well. The film shifts between muted and dimmed hotel room meetings, to full on gorgeous Las Vegas strip coloring with sequined outfits and blazing lights. Pinks, reds, blues, and all in between, Baz Luhrmann’s love affair with bright colors offsetting dark environments is on full display. I noticed a teensy bit of banding in the far reaches of the hotel rooms, but overall this disc is pretty artifact free. The same can be said of black crush. It’s there, but not going to be front and center to where you really notice it. Even with nearly 3 hours of content plus special features, the down converted Blu-ray manages to look as good as Luhrmann designed it to be, and had me raising my eyes in appreciation








Audio:

The Blu-ray and the 4K UHD disc both sport the same Dolby Atmos track (with a secondary 5.1 Dolby Digital track) on either disc, so whichever version you, you can be assured that you get the same great audio mix. Said mix is very spacious and expansive, letting the copious musical numbers just flow through all speakers with equal aplomb. The track can get soft and silent when Elvis and Parker are talking meetings, but also incredibly visceral and heart pounding when the music is dominating. The scene where Elvis takes a trip down to the other side of the tracks to hear B.B. King for the first time is just incredible. As he’s driving down the street in his Caddy, you can actually feel the pressure expanding and contracting in the room with the beats. LFE is reserved and quiet when needed, but also accentuates the music quite well, and can really put forth the power in some of the larger theater crescendos. Great sounding one that captures the heart and soul of the music in the mix, and makes for a rousing home theater experience.









Extras:

• Bigger Than Life: The Making of Elvis
• Rock 'N Roll Royalty: The Music & Artists Behind Elvis
• Fit for a King; The Style of Elvis
• Viva Australia: Recreating Iconic Locations for Elvis
• "Trouble" Lyric Video

Final Score: ​

All in all, Elvis is not a bad movie. It’s just not that great. I was solidly entertained for a good portion of the movie, and actually was really digging it until the film seems to loos steam and focus in the 3rd act. At that point the movie is almost 2 hours long already, and Luhrmann sort of crams in the last moments of Elvis’s life into a 30 minute period, glossing over the drug abuse, his exploding waist line and depression, and sort of goes full pell mell towards his death without setting up the reason WHY. It’s an interesting take, but one that feels like even at 159 minutes was cut short by about 30 minutes to fully flesh out the story a bit better. The Blu-ary is quite stellar though, with great video and audio, and a moderate array of extras. I will say this, while I had a good enough time, Elvis is probably the weakest of the music biopics that we’ve had in the last 5 years of a major star. Decent Watch is my final recommendation.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, David Wnham
Directed by: Baz Luhrmann
Written by: Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core) English, French, Spanish DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 159 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: September 13th, 2022

Recommendation: Decent Watch