Summary: Having seen Bridge Too Far on DVD I was not expecting much from this release. I however was pleasantly surprised it looked much better than the DVD by a long shot. Presented in 1080p/MPEG-2 the source looked to be in good shape, but did have some speckles and occasional blemishes. The color palette is rather muted, but at least what there is clean and solid. Flesh tones overall look accurate, but the use of tints occasionally gives the flesh tones a bluish cast. The use of filters gives the visuals a soft often dreamy look that kills the sharpness of some scenes, but nothing to detract from the images on the whole. The overall image looked pleasantly film like with a fair amount of detail, but it does not have the "realness" look of Battle of Britain, but it also does not have the visual problems that Battle of Britain had as well. Lastly I did find a few instances of posterization and noise, but I had to view the movie twice to notice it.

MGM offers a Dts-HD Loss less Master Audio 5.1 track at 16/48khz, which for the age of the film sounds pretty good. There is also an optional English Dolby Digital 4.0 track, a 5.1 French Dolby Digital track at 448kbps, and a Spanish 1.0 dub at 192kbps. I chose to listen to the Dts loss less and the Dolby 4.0 tracks. The Dts track had a very nice sound to it for a film this age, however it is very front heavy, with almost no surround contribution whatsoever. What surround information was there was so low in level; it was swamped by the output of the front three channels. Bass is robust, clean, and pretty powerful for a film this age. The front three speakers bass output is limited to above 40hz output, much in line with the theater speakers of the time period. There is also not a lot of bass below 40hz coming from the LFE as well. Sound effects are spread across the front soundstage, but are strangely limited in the surrounds. The score didn't sound bad, but did have a very close up front sound staging characteristic, and there was an occasion of a piccolo distorting in the score. Overall distortion was not a problem. The Dolby Digital 4.0 track sounded very top heavy, and basically sounded out of balance when compared to the Dts track. It sounded like they just removed the LFE, and made no effort to restore balance to the track by sewing it into the main channels. This is not a bad sounding soundtrack, but it does have its problems

Bridge Too Far is not a bad movie, but not a particularly good one either. Its takes a little long to get on its feet, but once it does, it moves along nicely. I did not hold my attention as well as Battle for Britain did, and it most ways Battle for Britain is a better movie. But if you like WWII films, this one is sure to please. I would recommend you rent this first, and buy if you find that you like it. -- Reviewed by Sir Terrence, July 20, 2008 Blu-ray.com