Eastwood handles the dark, complex material very well and utilizes Parker's own music as a way to relieve tension throughout the film s near three hour running time. The solid cast of BIRD also includes Diane Venora, Michael Zelniker, Samuel E. Wright, Keith David, Michael McGuire, James Handy, Morgan Nagler, Arlen Dean Snyder and Sam Robards. Right up front, let me say that BIRD is a dark movie. The transfer is very good a reproducing the film's darkness, without trying to change the filmmaker's intentions. For the most part, the image is sharp and provides very good detail, although because of the film's dark noir-ish quality, film grain is noticeable during much of the presentation.
Colors are rather restrained looking, which enhances the overall atmosphere of the film.
Flesh tones are accurate and there are no problems with chromatic distortion of bleeding during the presentation. Blacks are very accurate and the level of shadow detail is pretty good, when one considers how dark this movie is. Digital compression artifacts are well concealed by solid dual layer authoring. The soundtrack has been nicely re-mixed for this presentation into Dolby Digital 5.1. Since Eastwood utilized actual recordings of Parker, the music should sound badly dated, but does not.