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Blu-ray Review: THE NIGHT OF

Oct 18, 2016 Posted by in DVD/Blu-ray, Reviews | Comments

HBO’s eight-part limited series The Night Of is based on the 2008 British crime drama Criminal Justice. Nasir Khan (Riz Ahmed) is a clean-cut Pakistani-American college student who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. One evening he borrows his father’s taxi cab to drive to a party. He can’t figure out how to turn off the On Duty light, so people keep approaching him for a ride, but he keeps refusing. That is, until the beautiful Andrea (Sofia Black D’Elia) steps into the cab.

They drive to the river and then back to her place, where Naz quickly realizes that this young woman has a wild side—she’s turned on by a dangerous knife game and this leads to a night full of sex, drugs and alcohol. The next morning Naz wakes up to find Andrea stabbed to death in her bed, but he has no recollection of what happened. He flees the scene along with the knife they had been fooling around with the night before, which has both of their blood on it. However, on the way home he gets pulled over for making an illegal left turn, and when the cops discover he has been drinking they take him in.

At the precinct the police find the knife on him, which happens to be the murder weapon they were looking for. He is arrested and placed in a holding cell, but Naz is confused, scared and naive—he believes the truth will set him free. The detective in charge of the case, Dennis Box (Bill Camp) is days from retirement and just wants to close the case. He tries to trick Naz into giving him a confession, but the young man eventually asks for a lawyer—though he may have already said too much. Quirky defense attorney John Stone (John Turturro) sees what’s going on and offers to represent Naz, but Nasir must head to prison until his trial.

The series follows Naz’s defense, giving an intense, thought-provoking look at the dark inner-workings of the criminal justice system. It is devastating to see the tranformation that Naz goes through while trying to survive in prison, ultimately becoming a shell of the decent, upstanding young man he once was. As the series plays out you start to question whether or not Naz really is as innocent as he claims—especially after seeing this completely different side of him in jail. Even Naz’s own mother starts to doubt her son’s innocence. It’s not until after Detective Box retires that he starts to feel guilty about the short cuts he took and cover-ups he made in regards to Naz’s case, and finally starts to do the job he should have done in the first place.

While mainly focusing on what’s going on with Naz in prison and how it affects his family, the series also follows the peculiar private life of Naz’s lawyer John Stone and his never-ending search for strange new alternate medicines and treatments for his allergies and ailments. This is the one part of the series that didn’t really work for me. I think it is mainly there to add some levity to break up the darkness of Naz’s plight, but it never really seemed to serve a greater purpose or go anywhere. It felt like maybe they were trying to use the fact that he is very allergic to cats and yet he keeps a cat in his house as some kind of metaphor about how he’s always helping strays no matter what species they are.

The Blu-ray looks and sounds great. The picture is pristine and nicely captures every detail of the prison and courtroom drama. Dark scenes and lighter scenes both look stunning. The audio track provides clear dialogue, and the surround and stereo channels are used well to enhance the ambiance. There is a Play All option for the episodes on each disc, and the episode menus offer the ability to watch the recaps that were originally aired before each episode. The Blu-ray includes both iTunes and UltraViolet Digital HD copies of the episodes. However, there is no other bonus material included.



What’s Included:

Episodes: (8:45:32)

  • All 8 episodes of the limited series:
    “The Beach”, “Subtle Beast”, “A Dark Crate”, “The Art of War”, “The Season of the Witch”, “Samson and Delilah”, “Ordinary Death”, “The Call of the Wild”
  • Blu-ray:

    • 1080p / Widescreen 1.78:1
    • Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Spanish DTS Digital Surround 2.0
    • Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish

    Digital HD (Redemption Deadline 12/31/2021):

    • Digital HD copy redeemable via iTunes or Google Play
    • UltraViolet Digital HD copy redeemable via Flixster or Vudu

Extras:

    There is no bonus material besides the digital copies of the episodes.

 


Final Thoughts:

My Rating
Episodes:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Recommended

I really enjoyed this well-acted, thought-provoking drama. The Blu-ray presentation is top-notch, providing excellent audio and video. The set also includes two Digital HD copies of the episodes. I would have rated this release as Highly Recommended, but there is absolutely no bonus material included in the set. However, this is still worth picking up for the miniseries itself.