Tropic Thunder

Tropic Thunder is a movie about the making of a movie. It has been decided to create the best Vietnam movie of all time, based on a true story by Vietnam veteran Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), and to do that, some of the most popular stars of Hollywood have been cast for the leading roles. Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), a top grossing action star, Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), a five-time Oscar winner, Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), famous for his comedic flatulence, and Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), a rapper mostly interested in promoting his brands of energy drinks and candy bars. Together they form a cast who are more trouble than they are worth.

The movie quickly runs into delays and set-backs and in desperation the director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan), on the advice of Four Leaf, decides to bring the main cast into the jungle unsupervised, to subject them to real fear and thereby inspire them to greater acting. But unfortunately they have been dropped in the middle of the territory of a heroin-producing gang called the Flaming Dragon and when Cockburn steps on a real landmine and is killed, the actors believe it is special effects and part of the set-up and they continue as if filming the movie. Quickly running into the Flaming Dragon, who they believe to be actors playing Vietcong, it becomes a fight for survival in the enemy infested jungle, although it only slowly dawns on them, that this is no longer make-believe.

Tropic Thunder is a lot of fun to watch, with a, if not original then at least well-executed story. Ben Stiller and his variety of comedy are usually a bit hit-and-miss for me, but in this case he has made a movie that I found to be really entertaining and he is helped along by a well-cast group of other Hollywood stars. The star performance comes from Robert Downey Jr. Who plays "the dude playin' the dude, disguised as another dude!", an Australian character actor who, as the ultimate challenge, has decided to undergo cosmetic surgery to darken his skin so he can play an African-American.

There are also lots of cool action in the movie, but it is the comedy that is the focal point and I found it to be just the right mix of the two genres.

The video transfer of this release is presented in 1080p/MPEG-4 AVC in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. It is a very good looking transfer, with a great amount of detail in the picture. In Close-ups skin colours appear natural and lifelike and every hair, wrinkle, and skin pore is easily discernable and so is the fine detail put into the uniforms worn by the cast, which also show off the textures of the fabrics nicely. In panoramic views the Hawaiian jungle standing in for the jungles of Vietnam look lush and shows every facet of the plant life and the vivid greens of the foliage are incredibly varied.

I did not spot any use of DNR on the transfer and neither were there any banding to be seen. There were a few times I noticed some very slight use of EE, but it was only by freeze-framing. It was never noticeable during playback. The blacks were good and deep, with a lot of detail and the shift between darker and lighter nuances were also smooth. A good example of this is the pyrotechnics explosion in the hot LZ scene, where the many nuances of the billowing smoke gives a nice contrast to the bright oranges of the flames. Night scenes were also finely detailed and only rarely was it hard to discern, what was going on in the shadows.

Although this is not quite the best picture I have seen on a Blu-ray, it is among the best for a live-action movie and deserves to be at the highest end of five out of six stars.

As good as the video transfer is the audio track on this release is almost even better. We are presented with an English 5.1 Dolby TrueHD lossless track and it is both loud and magnificent and it gives all of your speakers a nice workout. The audio have a great sense of depth and directionality, particularly during action scenes where bullets fly past you in all directions and explosions rattle your chair and wake the neighbours. This is a track that should be cranked up to the maximum capacity of your sound system. This is particularly evident in the hot LZ scene, where you can almost believe, that you are standing in the middle of a war zone.

But that does not mean that there is anything lacking in the more quiet scenes. When trekking through the jungle there are plenty of ambient noises, again using the surround speakers with nice effect. The dialogue also comes through clearly at all times, except that Downey's lines are sometimes a little hard to discern, but that is more a part of his character than it is a fault of the audio track.

If I have to find fault with this track it is that it is perhaps a little to over-the-top. It really goes out of its way to strain your subwoofer and lacks a little subtlety, but nevertheless it is a perfect fit for the movie.

This release presents us with a good deal of extras, all of them AVC encoded HD with 2.0 Dolby Digital audio, except the MTV short which is 480p.

Filmmaker Commentary with Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux, Stuart Cornfeld, Jeff Mann, John Toll, and Greg Hayden

Cast Commentary with Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr.

Before the Thunder (5 min.) - Cast and crew talks about how the idea for the movie came about.

The Hot LZ (6 min.) - Cast and crew talks about the planning and shooting of the hot LZ sequence at the start of the movie.

Blowing Shit Up (6 min.) - Cast and crew talks about the big explosions in the movie.

Designing the Thunder (7 min.) - Cast and crew talks about the choice of shooting locations and the design of some of the sets.

The Cast of Tropic Thunder (22 min.) - Presentation of the main actors (Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Brandon T. Jackson, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, and Nick Nolte).

Rain of Madness (30 min.) - Mockumentary which goes behind the scenes on the movie within the movie.

Make-Up Test with Tom Cruise (2 min.) - Test footage with intro by Ben Stiller and Editor Greg Hayden.

Deleted Scenes/Extended Sequences/Alternate Ending (20 min.) - Two deleted scenes, two extended, and an alternate ending, all with optional commentary/introduction.

Full Mags (12 min.) - Uncut reels with the actors repeatedly improvising scenes.

MTV Movie Awards - Tropic Thunder (4 min.) - Promotional short.

BD-Live - Get access to deleted scenes from "Rain of Madness" and more "Full Mags" outtakes. Unfortunately I could now view these for some reason, but only got an error message when I tried.

Of the two commentaries the first was quite informative and the second more for laughs. Downey does the second one in character as Kirk Lazarus almost all the way through which, depending on your tolerance, is very funny or grows old quite fast; I thought it was a nice touch. The rest of the extras are fairly standard with two exceptions. First I do not remember seeing something quite like the "Full Mags" before and second the "Rain of Madness" mockumentary was absolutely hilarious. It mocks the one and half hour documentary "Hearts of Darkness" which went behind the scenes on the infamous filming of Apocalypse Now and it is really funny from start to end.

It is too bad that the BD-Live extras did not work for me at the time of this review. It would have been nice if they were included on the disc itself, but I guess they ran out of room on this already packed BD50, so it is hard to blame them. Otherwise I was quite satisfied by the amount of extras on this release, with most of it being of a fairly high quality and almost all of it in HD.

Tropic Thunder is probably not for everyone, but I had a lot of fun watching it. I am a fan of neither Ben Stiller nor Jack Black, but Robert Downey Jr.'s performance easily compensated for their crazy antics. Another great, and surprisingly comedic, performance comes from Tom Cruise playing the studio head Les Grossman. I never knew he had it in him to be this funny.

On top of being an entertaining movie, the Blu-ray release of Tropic Thunder also sports both excellent video and audio and there is also a nice amount of quality extras included, so if you liked the movie at all, buying this release should be a no-brainer.