Film
Army of One follows ex-construction contractor Gary Faulkner (Nicolas Cage – Left Behind), now unemployed handy man who believes God has sent him on a mission to capture Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan.
The story is based on the real-life Faulkner who travelled to Pakistan looking for bin Laden, which makes one wonder about the man, while watching him portrayed on-screen, and what might have driven him to make this epic decision, and set out on such a potentially dangerous task.
The film is one of those that one would watch with a group of laughing buddies, commenting throughout at the madness of Faulkner’s plans and ideas. Cage’s acting feels over the top, as usual, but this does fit the character he is portraying, so one can forgive him.
Sadly, Army of One does feel as if it is dragging along at times, and one wishes something profound would happen. Sadly, this is not to be. Whether this would make a viewer laugh may be rather hit or miss, dependent on their sense of humour, or mindset at the time of viewing. Maybe wait to check it out on TV.
Disc
The DVD for Army of One is technically average, with some visible video artefacts visible throughout. The main feature, however, is rather enjoyable.
Army of One is available now, to purchase on disc, in South Africa.
Video
Video is encoded at a decent bitrate, however there are visible artefacts on-screen, mostly around finer details, and where it appears the image has been slightly sharpened. There is also a small degree of strobing with fast moving objects on-screen.
These two issues, though, are not too distracting, and not too visible when viewing at a normal viewing distance. They are a bit more visible on larger or higher resolution screens.
Colours are not particularly vibrant, and there is a small amount of bleed round the edges of some objects, especially with finer detail.
Video for the autoplay trailers, and menu system, are a lot more compressed than the main features, with a lot more very visible, and larger, artefacts on-screen.
Audio
Audio is encoded at a high average bitrate, and is presented in both a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround soundtrack, and a stereo 2.0 track. These are only selectable via the hardware or software player of the viewer, and not via the discs navigation menu.
Dialogue is clear via the centre speaker, of the surround track, with a decent amount of use for the surround channels, serving to expand the on-screen world, and further draw the viewer into the story.
Navigation
Disc navigation simple, with a static main menu, and accompanying background music. There are text links to play the main feature, or to go to a scenes sub-menu.
The highlight colour on the main menu is not very apparent, meaning one might not be sure of which of the two text menu items are selected. On the main menu, the highlight colour is almost the same colour as the background, while on the scenes sub-menus the highlight colour is much lighter.
The scenes sub-menus each comprise of four small, colour, motion thumbnails, for a total of twelve chapters across three scenes sub-menus. While these are numbered, they are not labelled, nor is there a chapter index on the DVD packaging, so an amount of guesswork is required, in order to navigate to a particular part of the main feature.
Bonus Features
There are no bonus features on the disc, other than trailer for Their Finest, Fun Mom Dinner, and Home Again, which autoplay at the beginning of the disc.
While these trailers can be individually fast-forward, or skipped, they can not be accessed again via the disc menu.
Packaging
Packaging for the DVD is straightforward, and basic, with a poster on the front, and a lengthy synopsis at the back, in small font. Technical details are on the back as well.
