I, Robot (Blu-ray)

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Video:
Though there's a slight graininess in some scenes, one suspects that it's a director's decision, and for the most part "I, Robot" looks remarkable in 1080p HD--especially in the FX scenes. What you notice most is that pleasing 3-dimensionality that comes from some of the better Blu-ray releases because of finer edge detail, and that detail is confirmed in close-ups on the faces of both robots and humans. Colors are superbly saturated, so that the nuances of cold-steel robotics and the warmth of humans come across equally well. It's a nice transfer, too, at 25mbps.

Audio:
The English DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio does a fine job of distributing a dynamic soundtrack, noticeable especially during high-danger scenes with all those gunshots, crashes, and explosions. There's a nice balance between special effects, dialogue, and music, too. Additional soundtracks are in Spanish and French Dolby Digital 5.1, with subtitles in English (CC), Spanish, Cantonese, and Korean.

Extras:
How do I begin? Fox has been touting its Blu-ray bonus features lately, and I have to say that there's much to be praised here. A lot of it is user-friendly. But some of it, unfortunately, is not.

The options are accessible through the color buttons on your remote. Press red and it gives you a behind-the-camera features menu. Blue gives you a search index. Yellow is for trivia and notes. And Green is the commentary index. This is really cool, and on the plus side, when when you click on a color button the menu remains until you hit that button again. That allows you to toggle from one commentary to another, for example, or to see what bonus features appear as each new scene begins (since they're scene-specific, with the menu changing as the film progresses).

The downside is that you can't access the bonus features except through these color buttons--or at least I couldn't figure out a way. That means you have to be incredibly patient (which I was not) in order to even see what the range of bonus features was. When you click the red button, you'll get a behind-the-camera menu of features, but only ones that are specific to the scenes currently playing on the TV. As the scenes change, so do the features options. And I couldn't find an index, if there even was one, to just watch these bonus features all by their lonesome.

Other negatives are that the "bonus features" are sometimes so short that it's hardly worth the disruption of the film, while not all of them contain any commentary (go figure). Included among them are an alternate ending and production notes. But I couldn't even begin to tell you what or how many featurettes there are on this disc, because I frankly didn't have the patience to go through the entire film again. With no comprehensive index, you just have to watch the film and see what features pop up. How much better it would have been if there were, in addition to this option, a separate menu with a "play all" option?

The index, likewise, is a nifty thing, but when you click on s subject you get a list of times in the movie, not scenic descriptions, so I'm not sure how useful that is either.

The trivia track? Because the field is so narrow and short, you have to wait for sentences to finish as they pop up again in that field. And sometimes it isn't trivia either, but academic-style erudition. Again, my patience was tried.

Finally, the commentaries. There are three here: a director and screenwriter track, a legacy and design track, and a music score track. All three are pretty low-key, and average at best, and downright dull during some moments. It's possible to listen to a commentary while also playing with other bonus features, though when you click on something you get a disruption while the feature plays.

In the end, the bonus features are a mixed bag, with as a few too many negatives for Fox to be touting them so much. But I give them points for moving in the right direction.

Bottom Line:
For a sci-fi flick, "I, Robot" is pretty by-the-numbers, if you think about it. But the crisp action, the wonderful special effects, and Smith's believable performance make this one a keeper.

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