Another 48 Hrs. (1990) 4K Dolby Vision review, UK Paramount UHD disc. HDR metadata: Mastering display colour primaries: DCI-P3. Mastering display luminance levels: 1000/0.0001 max/min nits. Maximum Content Light Level: N/A. Maximum Frame Average Light Level: N/A. Disc type: UHD66.
For whatever reasons - in this case the lure of lots of pieces of green paper with dead presidents on them - Walter Hill's blistering 1982 team-up with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte was eventually graced with a sequel in 1990. It simply cannot recapture the magic of the original, as the bigger budget is no match for the sheer brass balls of the first movie, and yet I've always liked it. The action is decent, the interplay between Murphy and Nolte is still fun, and it moves like a rocket. James Horner even got the steel drums out again (this is one movie where he can be forgiven for rehashing his previous score). People will always wail about how the movie got cut down just prior to release but I don't think there's some long-lost epic out there that people should be pining for. I'm not saying it didn't get cut down but at the same time I've never thought I was watching some hacked-up masterpiece, you know? It flows remarkably well for something that was apparently bodged together at the last minute, and the subject wasn't even broached in the new Filmmaker Focus interview with Walter Hill on the 2021 Paramount Presents BD. Huh.
As with 48 Hrs. on UHD, the sequel's 4K presentation is a mixed bag albeit not for all the same reasons as the first film's 4K. Comparing the Paramount Presents (PP) Blu-ray to this new 4K it becomes obvious that the PP Blu-ray was version 1.0 of this remaster, as there's a sprinkling of dirt and scratches on the 1080p disc which have been erased on the actual 4K UHD. Take the raceway shootout after the opening scene, when Cates is stalking his prey and then pulls his gun on them there's a faint white scratch smack-bang in the centre of the image for several of these shots on the PP but on the UHD the scratch is gone, as are several hits of white dirt throughout the movie. It's not a constant hail of dirt on the PP, no, but as with the first film it becomes more obvious upon comparison to the more polished 4K presentation which is approved by Walter Hill. There's even some auto-clean errors on the PP just like the first movie's PP Blu-ray, I'll show an example of this in a minute. It shows how lackadaisical that PP remaster was that it leaves in the schmutz but erases genuine picture information, but as it was likely a pandemic job then it doesn't do to dwell on it, especially as the 4K tidies it up anyway. Another point of difference is the scene when the Iceman pays a visit to Malcolm Price, in that up-angled shot of him opening the door the PP has been hit with some really smeary DNR, watch the grain warp around the door as it opens, while the same scene on the UHD has no such blatant fudgery. And yes, the framing is a bit tighter on UHD than the PP but again, there wasn't a single point in the movie where I thought it looked too tight.
This is the example of the differing dirt clean-up I mentioned, on the PP the algorithm has mistaken a flash of Eddie Murphy's teeth to be negative dirt and erased one of his gnashers, while the same frame on the UHD has no such error. Same film scan most likely, but not the same restoration thereof.
Paramount Presents BD
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UHD
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For the first 6-7 minutes of the movie we're looking at pretty much one long optical for the opening titles so it's softer, so it's mushier, and please don't fret if you see a weird cross-hatching effect on several of those exterior shots of the sandy location, that's patterning from the filter they've put over the camera lens to make it a bit softer and hazier. Even when they go indoors into the bar it's still very smoky and gauzy looking. Add to that the built-in degradation of the optical printing and it's not great to look at, but it is what it is. I say that because Paramount haven't clubbed this opening scene to death with DNR, they've definitely taken a little off but not to the extent of making it look too smooth. But when it gets to the next scene, all bright and sharp at the raceway in broad daylight, the image comes alive. There's some excellent detail here and a pin-sharp layer of fine grain, clearly from camera negative, and those medium/close shots of Eddie Murphy outside the prison as he's shouting at Nolte are sensational, all that detail on his Armani suit coming through in a way that massacres the equivalent shot on the PP Blu-ray, it's not 'bad' but it's just very very soft compared to the 4K UHD. The 4K may even be a fraction too sharp, remember how I said in the 48 Hrs. UHD review that the suit doesn't cause any moiré or crosstalk there? There's a bit of it this time around, it's the hospital scene when Cates tells Reggie he's been released into his custody, the reverse shots of Murphy are a lil' bit jittery on his suit. But no biggie, it looks tremendous otherwise. The grain has just a touch of 'stickiness' to it, if you look closely it can sometimes trail behind movement but also no biggie.
The movie continues in this vein until the 00h35m37s mark, when the Iceman's bespectacled lacky hangs up the phone and it cuts to Reggie and Cates driving along the open highway. At that moment, when it cuts from the one scene to the other, the image appears to drop down one generation if not more and it stays that way right on through the rest of the film. The grain becomes rougher, the detail loses all its lustre, I've never seen this happen on such a relatively recent movie. Occasional shots and scenes, fine, but not the entire remainder of the movie! For much older films we often have to contend with a patchwork of the best surviving elements, sure, but for something that's just over 30 years old to only have one third comprise of OG negative (and ~6 minutes of that is an optical!) is a truly bizarre development. Maybe it had something to do with the hasty cutting that was done in post-production, I dunno, but otherwise I'm dumbfounded. It's there on the PP but didn't stand out because of how much softer that transfer is in general, it still gets grittier at the same point but you're hard-pressed to really notice. But on the UHD? Hmmm. And in case people accuse me of being all hyperbolic and shit (who, meesa?) please note that I haven't equated it with looking like a DVD or anything, you're still getting a HD-ish level of quality out of it and the UHD does a betterer job than the PP as the grain is more abundant and that darned Armani suit still has fractionally finer detailing in 4K. But it's NOTHING like the sometimes razor-sharp goodness of the first few reels and no, it's not to do with film stock or lenses or creative choices blah blah blah, they have simply used a lower generation source for two thirds of the movie. I recently shot down a forums member's suggestion that Paramount were using lower quality elements and transfers for their 4K stuff but here there's no denying that something squinky has happened, although I don't think it's a deliberate action, I think that this is just how the best primary element for Another 48 Hrs. has been conformed.
For colour and HDR there's nothing remarkable going on but hey, suits me fine. Skin tones stay quiet, looking almost like mahogany in Brion James' case, and there's no overriding colour cast that permeates it. Even though they had a much biggerer budget they didn't overly stylise the sequel, they stuck with the 1.85 format (Matthew F. Leonetti photographing proceedings this time around, handily employing his own family-run Ultracam company to provide the 35mm cameras) to match the first movie rather than opting for a flashier anamorphic set-up or whatever, and although the film stocks had gotten faster and sharper in the interim you still get that hint of roughness that comes from 4-perf 1.85 using a fairly small bite of the negative. The UHD's colour looks livelier than the PP though, it's not as big of a difference between the SDR and HDR versions of the first film, but enough to give it a fraction more pep. Same with the HDR itself, I was surprised to note that there's virtually no difference in the highlight detail between SDR and HDR this time. Not that the UHD looks blown-out and clipped, far from it, there's a decent dollop of range there, it's just that the PP reproduces that same amount of range. But what the UHD does is give it some more brightness so those same highlights have more oomph, not enough to distract but enough to add a level of distinction that the PP BD lacks. Average brightness is also decent, decent enough to not have brightness junkies reaching for the smelling salts. Black levels are much deeper on the second movie than they are on the first, deep to the extent of losing some shadow detail on hair and clothing, and the PP Blu-ray has a lower gamma so it looks a bit lighter. But with that darker low end and brighter brights you get a punchier look to the UHD vs the PP.
After what I would consider to be a disastrous encode - at least on the HDR10 layer - on the UHD of the first 48 Hrs., the compression of the second one is VASTLY betterer. Watched in HDR10 first, then Dobly Vision afterwards, the former is very nicely handled for the most part. There are a couple of moments where the bright parts of the image wig out, like the background behind Ganz when he says "that's the pig who wasted my brother", but they're rare. And you see that shot of the bright sky with the Caddy zooming into the distance that's on capsaholic? The one that's seemingly made up of Duplo blocks it's so badly compressed? It and the shot before it last for literally just a few seconds so you don't have time to focus on it, and even if you do it's *so* blocky that the blockiness almost disappears into itself, as weird as that sounds. And yet there are other scenes with bright patches of sky that are fine, that establishing shot of the prison which pans across I was expecting to be blocksville but it's absolutely a-okay in HDR10. Darker scenes fare much betterer this time around too, there's none of the ugly twitching blockiness that infests people's faces on the first movie in HDR10. And they didn't turn the bitrate down to like 10 Mb/s for the opening credits either! With the extra data from the Dobly layer folded in then the encode gets even betterer, most of the blocky brightness is rectified. It's fookin bonkers that two brand new UHDs from the same studio released at the same time can be so inconsistent with respect to each other's encode, but that's Paramount for you: will it be shite or will it be superb? Depends what the wheel of fortune lands on I guess.
Ain't it always the way? The first 48 Hrs., a classic of the genre, gets a lovely 4K restoration but is encoded to disc by a group of drunken baboons. Its sequel gets a transfer that seems fine then inexplicably uses a lower generation source for the last two thirds of the movie but is encoded to disc by the far more sober macaques down the hall. I mean, I like Another 48 Hrs. quite a bit but the first is on another level and if you forced me to choose which one I'd sacrifice to the encoding gods it'd be the sequel every time. Alas, that's not what Paramount had in mind! Still, we can't change it now and as it is I rather enjoyed the UHD of Another 48 Hrs., even with the source-level weirdness. You just accept the rougher quality of the film as it goes along, and at least it's not hindered by a pish encode.
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Another 48 Hours 4K UHD (1990)
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