World War II - War in the Pacific

World War II - War in the Pacific

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Movie Reviews of World War II - War in the Pacific

Movie Review: THERE'S A REASON IT'S CHEAP
Summary: 3 Stars

Now, the bad news. Video and sound quality are poor. This is not DVD quality. Video of studio shots (the announcer, maps, etc.) are blurry and appear to be a dub of a VHS tape onto a DVD. Sound on the first disc is gated to reduce hiss; unfortunately, this leaves the sound rather choppy and unnatural-sounding, and lacking in upper frequencies (which reduces the intelligibility of the voice-over). Sound on the second disc is thankfully not mangled, but instead there is noticeable tape hiss. Since it's almost all combat footage (sometimes jerky, sometimes not focused, often poor contrast) the poor video quality is not as much an issue, especially since the footage is edited in sections barely longer than a few seconds each -- you barely have time to focus on it before it cuts away to something else. As far as the sound, I would not be surprised if it was manufactured later with sound effects. And by the time you reach the last documentary, you begin to recognize some of the footage which they had already used for another battle.

Also, this is not a comprehensive history of the Pacific War, but a collection of 20-min. documentaries from the mid-'80's each covering a key battle or some other subject. At least they do generally have them arranged in chronological order.

The verdict? It's a chance to get a lot of combat footage for cheap (although it's almost all American footage, and told from the American point of view). I'm generally happy with it, but the DVD quality sure could have been better.