Cocaine Bear Blu-ray review

May 21, 2023- Permalink

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released Elizabeth Banks’ Cocaine Bear in the US in April, but we’re just getting it now in Canada. I had a chance to review the disc which is loosely — LOOSELY — based on a true story. In reality, smugglers ditched 75 kilos of coke in Tennessee back in 1985 and a black bear ingested it and promptly died. In this movie, the aforementioned bear lives and goes on a bloody limb-ripping killing spree. The horror comedy stars stars Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Margo Martindale, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Ray Liotta in one of his last roles.

The 1080p AVC encoded digital transfer is presented in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. It’s an excellent transfer with great clarity in all the usual places: facial textures, textiles, and environments. The colour palette is broad and ranges from the rich reds of copious amounts of blood to the deep greens of the forest. There’s not any digital noise to speak of and no evidence of compression artifacts. In drug dealer parlance, this is “the good stuff.”

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of English and Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 tracks and a French (Canadian) DTS 5.1 track. Subtitles are available for English SDH, French, and Spanish. The surrounds put you into the forest with great ambient sounds and the action is giving some extra power with the low frequency channel. Dialogue is clear and centred.

In the US, Cocaine Bear comes with the Blu-ray disc, a DVD and a digital code. For some reason, Universal decided to skip the digital code for its Canadian release. Special features include an alternate ending, a gag reel, deleted and extended scenes, a short making-of featurette, a closer look at some of the bear’s kills, a script reading obviously called “Doing Lines”, and an audio commentary by director/producer Banks and producer Max Handelman.

Cocaine Bear is not a family film, unless you have older teens. It’s unapologetically gory and crazy and over-the-top. On the technical side, this goofy gore Blu-ray comes with great audio and video and nice collection of extras.