Just picked up the blu ray of this, and found it a real struggle. Outside of a pretty strong character role from Dolph, the production values are shocking. There's some horrible camera work, with some ugly wobble cam and atrocious framing, everything feels like one take, mistakes and all. Frank Grillo looks like he filmed on one afternoon off from another contemporary movie. I just thought the whole thing was boring, cheap and frankly rather incompetent. 4/10.
Re: OPERATION SEAWOLF (Steven Luke, 2022)
Posted: 11 Nov 2022, 07:03
by Moltisanti
Just can't muster the enthusiasm to even rent this one. Looks so lacking in every department. Maybe when it's streaming free I'll check it out but even then it's no guarantee.
This is available now on the Tubi app. Watched it and it was about what I expected. Not much excitement going on. Having Dolph as a Nazi sub captain who knows the war is over but still takes on one last mission out of "duty" isn't a bad premise but so little actually happens in the film. Just goes through the motions. Even at about 85 minutes it drags.
Shout! Studios gives its Blu-ray-only release of Operation Seawolf an MPEG-4 AVC encode on a BD-25 (disc size for feature: 24.70 GB) that comes with a slipcover. Steven Luke's fourth directorial feature appears in its originally composed ratio of 1.78:1. Cinematographer Joseph Loeffler shot the movie using a RED Digital Cinema Professional camera. (I couldn't ascertain if the DI was finished at 2K or 4K.) Color grading and color correction was done using DaVinci Resolve software. The image is clear with a color palette predominately made up of blue, gray, tan, and some red. The red tint inside the German sub (see Screenshot #s 5 and is impressively lit. The visual effects firm Postmodern Digital does pretty solid work for shots of the naval vessels (see frame grabs 16-18). However, the shot of the sun beaming towards Lady Liberty is doubtlessly animated (see capture #15). Some of the vfx shots can look relatively flat with two-dimensional compositional planes. Still, this is nearly a blemish-free transfer. Shout! has encoded the feature at a very healthy standard video bitrate of 34000 kbps.
A dozen chapters accompany the 87-minute feature.
Audio Quality 5.0 of 5
Shout! has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround track (2763 kbps, 24-bit) and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo (1665 kbps, 24-bit), which is a downmix of the 5.1. Spoken words are clean, crisp, and distinct. The 5.1 mix delivers a completing enveloping multi-channel experience during all the battle scenes, with all speakers outputted in full force. The viewer will hear with high fidelity the rippling of the waves. Composer Alex Kharlamov crafts a dramatic action score that blends in well with the other elements in the film's sound design.
A majority of the movie is spoken in English and Shout! has included optional English SDH. Some of the dialogue at the beginning is in German. Shout! has included compulsory English subs in all caps (see the last screen capture).
Steven Luke's fourth directorial feature appears in its originally composed ratio of 1.78:1.
Again this was initially framed in 2.39:1 during production. (VMI Worldwide had already done this to BLOOD OF REDEMPTION and WAR PIGS, thankfully not to CASTLE FALLS though. Therefore I used VLC to crop it to 2.39 to watch it, and it looks so much better)
Re: OPERATION SEAWOLF (Steven Luke, 2022)
Posted: 04 Apr 2023, 04:46
by Sec
I quite enjoyed this one, and got more Dolph than I expected. I'm a sucker for submarine movies and WWII, and knew very little about what the Axis were doing in the final days. My only issues was the (lack of) use of Frank Grillo.
New episode is here, this time chatting the WW2 combo of films from 2021 — OPERATION SEAWOLF and COME OUT FIGHTING! How does Dolph do traversing through WW2 once again and being directed by Steven Luke? Friend Steve Done joins the show to help me get to the bottom of this duo!
Posted: 09 Nov 2022, 00:44
is impressively lit. The visual effects firm Postmodern Digital does pretty solid work for shots of the naval vessels (see frame grabs 16-18). However, the shot of the sun beaming towards Lady Liberty is doubtlessly animated (see capture #15). Some of the vfx shots can look relatively flat with two-dimensional compositional planes. Still, this is nearly a blemish-free transfer. Shout! has encoded the feature at a very healthy standard video bitrate of 34000 kbps.
