The film’s original 2.0 track, which was included on the DVD, is not found here.

It’s one weakness is that the lower channel isn’t used as effectively as it could have been but otherwise it’s a nice upgrade over the DVD’s audio.

Dialogue is clear and articulate and sound quality is exceptional with no damage or noise presents.

The film offers a rather surprising and robust experience, making ample use of the surround channels, whether it be the sounds of people in the streets, objects whizzing by, traffic, trains, and many other sound effects, all of which sound to move naturally between the speakers. The Blu-ray presents a DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround track that sounds to have the same mix as the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track on the DVD but does actually sound a bit sharper and clearer in its presentation. In all it doesn’t offer a substantial improvement over the DVD since the DVD was already pretty good to begin with, but it does still look very good on the format. The source has some minor blemishes but is incredibly clean otherwise. I could detect some noise in places but it’s not overly distracting. Past all this the transfer still manages to deliver some strong black levels, and grain is present, though I’ve seen film grain rendered better. Likewise some minor halos, and what appears to be slight edge-enhancement, could also be inherent in the source because of the manipulation, but it can be hard to say for sure. There are moments of softness here and there but I suspect it’s an issue with the source and not necessarily a problem with the digital transfer. Generally speaking the transfer is more than pleasing, delivering a fairly if not overly sharp and crisp image. The film was originally shot in colour and then processed during development to create the black and white/monochrome finished product, and it’s possible that any limitation the image has is related to this. The DVD looked fine and this Blu-ray offers a nice little upgrade over it but I can’t say it’s substantial. I’m pretty sure this is the same high-definition transfer that was the basis for the DVD, supervised by Kassovitz. Criterion upgrades their DVD edition of Mathieu Kassovitz’s La haine to Blu-ray, presenting the film in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on a dual-layer disc.

La haine criterion