God Is a Bullet 4K UHD (2023)

[McCrutchy]

God Is a Bullet 4K Blu-ray

Capelight Pictures released Nick Cassavetes' God Is a Bullet (2023) on 16 November 2023.

[McCrutchy]

I got this a couple of weeks ago and watched it a few days later, so this shouldn't be taken as any kind of a "review", because my memory is fuzzy—it's more that there hasn't been a thread for this release until now.

This is the only 4K UHD version of the film anywhere in the world right now and it is the original 156-minute version. The film is completely English-friendly, as only one very short exchange is in Spanish and I doubt it was meant to be subtitled. Capelight have used a 100 GB disc.

The video is apparently HDR10+, but I don't believe my Oppo UDP-203 can decode that, so I only get HDR10. This is the only release of the film I have, but I recall that HDR opens the film up a bit, with some nice highlights, but mainly, it's the 4K resolution and better compression, though even on the 4K UHD, backgrounds can appear noisy, I don't know how much of that is down to the original digital capture versus Capelight's encoding. Otherwise, the digital image looked splendid.

As far as I know, the DTS-HD MA 5.1 reflects the original sound mix (I didn't spot any logo for, say, Dolby Atmos during the end credits) and I didn't notice anything amiss. I briefly checked the English subtitles and they were fine.

The 4K UHD disc includes only the German-dubbed trailer (in 1080p24) along with some trailers for additional films, but the Blu-ray (which plays in Region A) also includes what must be the same featurette as the US Blu-ray. This has only ever been available in "Mediabook" packaging, and that includes a booklet with writing in German only.

As for the film itself, I didn't care for it, mainly because I didn't find the villains credible, up to and including Case, the Maika Monroe character. In the featurette, everyone is made-up with their full-body tattoos, but sounding like normal, friendly actors, and it's really very funny. I'm not sure if I've ever seen another film with Maika Monroe, but with the exception of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, there are only a few people who I recognized in this and most of them have small parts. The film is long and nihilistic, but also very pretentious, often trying very hard to be meaningful, but failing rather completely. In the end,

[Show spoiler]the rescue of Bob's daughter

is treated as an afterthought, with a coda finale suggesting

[Show spoiler]a budding relationship between Bob and Case

, because that is what Cassavetes has been focused on all the time. I would regret the purchase, but I love watching films on 4K UHD discs, so I can't say that I'm not grateful to Capelight for taking a chance with this one. If you're a fan of the film, you should definitely check this 4K UHD out.