Unfinished Business (Blu-ray Review) at Why So Blu?

Unfinished Business (Blu-ray Review)

June 19th, 2015 by Gerard Iribe

In this hilarious drink-like-a-fish-out-of-water comedy, Vince Vaughn stars as a hard-working entrepreneur who travels to Europe with his two associates (Dave Franco and Tom Wilkinson) to close the most important business deal of their lives. But the journey quickly spins out of control as the hapless trio encounters all kinds of crazy obstacles, including Oktoberfest bar brawls, hotel foul-ups, foreign GPS directions, and a global fetish festival. In the end, these guys gone wild might just land the deal…if they can survive the trip. bottoms up!

Film

Unfinished Business is Vince Vaughn’s latest romp of a film this time joined by Tom Wilkinson and Dave Franco. Vaughn plays Dan Trunkman, who has recently left his employer after a salary dispute. He has now branched out on his own and taken Timothy McWinters (Wilkinson) and Mike Pancake (Franco) with him to see the new venture through. It’s three against the world. The new company Dan has started deals in minerals and the best way I can explain it, and according to Dan in the movie, is that he deals in leftover minerals. Whatever minerals didn’t get used up to build whatever it is that was being built he sells off. In any event, after being on their own for about a year and facing bankruptcy, Dan and the boys have landed what could be a lucrative deal with a big time player. They must go to Germany to seal the deal.

On the home front, Dan has a loving family, but seems to put work first. Timothy has problems of his own with his marriage and Mike just has problems. He seems to be touched. Once the boys get on over to Europe hijinks ensue. Anything and everything that can go wrong does. At one point Dan has nowhere to stay that he actually becomes part of an art installation in exchange for room and board. He becomes art and those scenes are really hilarious. Timothy is a horn dog and just wants to party and maybe hook up with a fine young thing and Mike wants a bit of the same.

I should point out that the marketing of the film in terms of the trailers led one to believe that Unfinished Business would be a non-stop thrill ride of hilariousness. Yes and no. There are certain plot points in the film that focus on Dan’s home life. His children are having problems at school and those problems manifest themselves at home through social media but since Dan is in Europe there’s nothing he can do, so the antics resume. There’s a bit of a tug of war in terms of what the film wants to be at times.

Personally, I enjoyed the antics and the grounded scenes at times. No, the film isn’t a non-stop barrel of laughs, because it does stop to reflect on what the guys are going through in their personal lives. Of course once the reflecting is done then we move to the next bit of hijinks. Sienna Miller also stars in the film and she plays Dan’s old boss and Nick Frost and James Marsden work for the big boss that Dan and company are there to deliver their handshake to. Overall, Unfinished Business is an average comedy and if you did see some of the trailers for the film then you only got 80% of the major gags presented. There’s a more salacious one involving Mike and a bathroom full of glory holes. That is all I will say on the matter.

Video

Encoding: AVC/MPEG-4

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1

Clarity/Detail: Unfinished Business looks terrific on Blu-ray. I was surprised at how clean the picture looked in high definition. Contrast and sharpness levels were on point and I did not notice anything out of the ordinary with the transfer.

Depth: The Blu-ray image looks pretty spectacular often times looking a bit reference-like.

Black Levels: Crush was nowhere to be found.

Color Reproduction: The color palette is nice and vibrant. There is plenty of warmth during the scenes that take place in St. Louis before it gets colder in Europe.

Flesh Tones: Everyone looked nice and healthy – except for that “bar tan” if you know what I mean.

Noise/Artifacts: I didn’t notice any noise or distracting artifacts. There may have been some debris but there’s a scene later on in the film where tear gas is used against protestors, which may have been the cause.

Audio

Audio Format(s): English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1, Czech Dolby Digital 5.1, Hungarian Dolby Digital 5.1, Polish Dolby Digital 5.1, Turkish Dolby Digital 5.1

Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Mandarin (Simplified), Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Turkish

Dynamics: The lossless soundtrack is really quite awesome for a comedy film like Unfinished Business. There are a number of scenes that sound terrific. This is not a run-of-the-mill DTS track. Once the party starts in Germany it goes off the rails.

Low Frequency Extension: The LFE really kicks during the scenes out near the protests and at the nightclub(s).

Surround Sound Presentation: The rear channels did a great job with ambience before kicking it into high gear with the more “action” oriented scenes.

Dialogue Reproduction: Dialogue was crisp and clear.

Extras

Unfinished Business is loaded up with a couple of extras. We have about 30 minutes of deleted scenes, a standard making-of featurette, a gallery, and a Digital HD copy of the film.

Deleted and Alternate Scenes (HD)

Show Me Your Business: Making of Unfinished Business (HD)

Gallery (HD)

Digital HD UltraViolet Copy

Summary

Unfinished Business wasn’t the usual raunchy romp I was anticipating. There were a few deeper subplots going on in the grand scheme of things that got their fair share of lime light before shifting back to the antics at hand. The technical specifications are near-reference in quality and presentation and the special features are what they are. If you were at all curious about Unfinished Business then I would go ahead and give it a mild recommendation. The Blu-ray edition is the way to go.