Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

The World's End Blu-ray Review

You've got blue on you...

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown, November 14, 2013



Sometimes you wanna go... where everybody knows your nay-yay-ame! Bum bum bum bummm!

Is there a genre Edgar Wright and cohorts in crime Simon Pegg and Nick Frost haven't tackled? Victorian period romance, I suppose. Otherwise, it's all fair game for the Cornetto Trilogy boys.cut a swath through horror and the house that Romero built, years before the New Zombie Renaissance.fired "two guns whilst jumping through the air" with slick style, shooting up '80s and '90s action classics, police procedurals and buddy cop flicks. And now there's, a hilarious send-up of sci-fi actioners, alien invasion movies, arrested development comedies, and even disaster blockbusters and post-apocalyptic wasteland epics. No genre is sacred; no genre is safe. Just the way Wright fans like it.isn't as pitch perfect as-- if you never warm to Pegg's insufferable manchild, you'll have a much harder time warming to the rest of the film -- but it's sharper and a wee bit smarter than, closes out the trio's trilogy of genre comedies with gusto, and delivers some of the biggest laughs of the year. Enough to declare it the best comedy of 2013? Absolutely.Thirty-eight-year old Gary King (Pegg) is deep in the throes of arrested development, obsessed with the good ol' days when he and his inseparable band of high school troublemakers -- Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), Oliver "O-Man" Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), Peter Page (Eddie Marsan) and best friend Andy Knightley (Frost) -- attempted to complete the Golden Mile: patronizing all twelve pubs in their hometown, Newton Haven, in a single night. The five teens failed to finish the Mile, of course, and soon after went their separate ways. Haunted by the glory that could have been, Gary tracks down his old chums twenty years later, cons each of them into returning with him to Newton Haven and, finally, at long last, put right what once went wrong. Twelve pubs. Twelve pints. There's just one problem. The fair folk of Newton Haven are acting awfully strange. How strange? As the gang soon discovers, the townspeople have been replaced by identity-swiping alien robots hellbent on what can only be described as a weirdly peaceful hostile takeover. Now, with the help of Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike) and a local named Basil (David Bradley), Gary and his friends have until dawn to thwart the body snatchers' plans, go toe-to-toe with the aliens' charming leader (Pierce Brosnan) and save the planet. For Gary, though, it's all secondary to the real task at hand: completing the Golden Mile.Never one to repeat himself, Wright strikes a completely different tone from anything he's done before, refusing to dip into what could easily become a very familiar bag of tricks.is brash, brazen and bound to a cocksure swagger that's all King, and yet all at once breezy and effortless. One-liners fly fast and fierce. Instantly quotable quotes litter the streets. Clever pop culture riffs await. Rapidfire rants and diatribes erupt at every turn. A welcome dose of heart enters the fray in the nick of time. Subtle genre satire births even more subtle genre satire, and that's not even counting the more obvious jabs filmfans will immediately skim off the surface. When I wasn't busy laughing, I found myself sitting back and simply marveling at the sheer craft of it all. There's far more to's comedy beats and action beatdowns than meets the eye, and carefully concealed in-jokes and references are hidden... at least for those willing to search them out through multiple viewings. (My favorite? Mild spoiler alert: take note of how closely the progression of events of the boys' first Golden Mile trek coincide with their present-day, alien-infested run. Wright practically maps out the entire movie from the outset.) My go-to comedies are always gifts that keep on giving, and I can't imagine exhaustingany time soon. I haven't come close.It's a bit darker than Wright's usual comedies too, with a self-centered hero-in-the-making that verges on unlikable (intentionally), a lovable lug who's abused and manipulated by a poor excuse for a friend, and a story that doesn't guarantee its entire ensemble will make it out in one piece.edged nearer and nearer to heartache as it hurtled along, pulling back at the last minute with an "all's well that ends well" finale after some sad business during a grim last stand.is a riot to the bitter end -- don't you worry -- but it doesn't flinch or back down, sidestepping a traditionally happy end-cap in favor of something much, much more satisfying. (Not to mention wholly unexpected.) I'd even go so far as to say the third act approaches Python-level brilliance, not just subverting a dozen sci-fi tropes, but one-upping them altogether. Compare's climactic showdown to's. There's no contest. Wright's face-off and endgame is richer, more thought-provoking, more intelligent, and possibly even more poignant science fiction. It just so happens to be hilarious. God forbid. Add to that a killer cast, terrific visual effects, a fantastic soundtrack, and thrilling, blazingly choreographed action scenes and you have something more than the best comedy of the year; you have one of the best science fiction films of 2013.