The Peacemaker - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

The Peacemaker, starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, was the first film distributed by DreamWorks Pictures. Because it was their first movie, I believe this is why they wanted to play it safe to the point of near-parody. The Peacemaker feels like the kind of movie that would exist in the fictional world of a TV sitcom. I could just hear Jerry, George, and Elaine talk about this movie in the diner over lunch. The plot is lifted from a million other Diet Tom Clancy flicks, in which a group of terrorists, for reasons that aren’t entirely without merit, want to nuke the United Nations, and it’s up to our heroes to stop them - just in the nick of time.

I like to say, “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore!” when it comes to action movies of yore, but in the case of The Peacemaker, they make them almost exactly like this. This could very well have been made last year, direct-to-streaming, for Apple, or Netflix, or Amazon. The screenplay is the real culprit for the film’s aggressive mediocrity, which often feels like a checklist of clichés. This is the kind of movie that features the following: Someone hacking into a computer containing sensitive information that they need to propel the story forward and saying, “I’m in!” Someone pulling a blurry photo of a license plate off a satellite and using the computer to magically enhance the image. And, of course, there is an explosion from which our two leads are hurled through the air.

George Clooney plays Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Devoe, a sort of jack-of-all-trades action hero who can do whatever the plot requires of him. He’s a martial artist. A gun expert. A bomb expert. A forensics expert. Nicole Kidman plays Dr. Julia Kelly, my favorite kind of action movie hero: the reluctant hero. She’s new to this, a little green, but she has courage in the face of tremendous danger and has the confidence to make some tough decisions.

The thing is, George Clooney and Nicole Kidman are both good in this movie. Damn good, even. And director Mimi Leder handles them with grace, subtlety, and nuance. There’s a moment when Dr. Kelly has to make a tough decision, and the movie allows her to be vulnerable, to be human, for a moment. She covers her face with her hands and sobs for a good, solid ten seconds, wipes away her tears, picks up the phone, and gets to work. Maybe it’s a bit of a cliché to allow the leading actress to be human through her tears, but it worked. It was a nice moment. 

So, too, do the action sequences pack a punch. The Peacemaker may be generic in a very specific, manufactured way that many movies today are. But because it predates the prevalence of green screen CGI mayhem, the practical effects, filmed on location in various cities across the world, look quite good. At the end of the day, with a movie like The Peacemaker, we’re there not for originality, but for the thrills, and this film has plenty of thrills in stock and ready to ship.

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Kino Lorber’s release of The Peacemaker on 4K UHD Blu-ray arrives in a standard case, featuring classic artwork from its original theatrical run and subsequent home video releases. No new artwork has been commissioned for this release. Inside the standard case are two discs—a 4K disc containing the film in 2160p/Dolby Vision, and a Blu-ray disc containing a 1080p HD version, along with special features.

For this release, Kino Lorber has restored The Peacemaker from its original camera negative and graded it in Dolby Vision HDR. While some KLSC 4K releases can be guilty of looking a little overbaked in the HDR implementation, a little heavy-handed on the color grading, The Peacemaker looks practically flawless. The sharpness of the image is phenomenal, and while the film’s cinematography looks pretty sleek, there’s still a healthy amount of grain to be found, giving it a real filmic look. To highlight the care that went into this quality restoration, I want to talk about the opening sequence: the nighttime train heist. While this is a very, very dark scene, there was never any issue with visual comprehension. Features that were lit were allowed to stand out, while cloaked in true-black darkness. It almost looked like something Gordon Willis would have shot for The Godfather.

I’ve been reviewing a lot of movies lately that feature a 5.1 surround track, which is more of an upmix of the film’s original stereo track. Sound effects, music, atmospherics, etc., will be matrixed into the rear of the soundstage. So it was a nice change of pace to watch something newer (well, newish), with a genuine surround sound mix designed specifically for the movie. The Peacemaker’s sound design is awesome. Encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, surround sound activity through the satellite speakers is at a near-constant level, and LFEs are almost just as frequent. A helicopter blasting a .50 caliber machine gun will make your entire sound system come alive! Helicopter blades whooshing through the front speaker, echoing gunfire pinging the rear speakers, the subwoofer pulsating throughout. However, this being a talky feature, all things considered—it’s not nonstop thrills, it’s about the thrill of the chase and the investigation—dialogue quality is favored throughout.

Kino’s release of The Peacemaker isn’t particularly rich in supplements, but it does contain two very informative audio commentaries recorded specifically for this disc, vintage stunt footage, and deleted scenes.

• Audio Commentary - Film Historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson
• Audio Commentary - Film Journalist Laurence Lerman
• Stunt Footage (SD 5:36)
• Deleted Scenes (SD 3:01)
• Theatrical Trailer

The Peacemaker is an expertly made product so generic and by-the-numbers that it comes off as a parody that the filmmakers forgot to put jokes into. It hits every single beat you could imagine. It also boasts some terrific performances and action sequences. This is the kind of movie you have playing in the background while you’re folding laundry. As a movie, it isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just unremarkable. But as a 4K disc, it’s excellent. The audio and video are uniformly awesome and will give your TV and sound system a workout. Special features may be a bit scant, but I can’t blame Kino Lorber for not going hog wild on loading a film like this with new supplements, beyond two new audio commentaries. The Peacemaker is Recommended, particularly for folks who have a nostalgic love for action-thrillers of this era. Maybe just wait until it goes on sale.