Given its title, one might expect 2024’s Before Dawn to offer another in Richard Linklater’s “Before” series that started with 1995’s Before Sunset. Instead, the film offers a tale set during World War I.

In 1916, Jim Collins (Levi Miller) lives with his relatives on their Australian sheep farm. As his friends join the military to fight in Europe, he feels torn between his family and peer pressure.

The latter impulse wins and Jim finds himself in combat in France. Though he enters with feelings of optimism and idealism, the gruesome nature of violent conflict soon takes its toll on him.

In other words: war is hell and it saps the humanity out of its participants. Can Dawn bring anything new or compelling to those well-worn themes?

Nope. While not a bad film, Dawn comes largely devoid of personality.

That feels accurate in a variety of ways, both literal and figurative. In the former domain, none of the characters ever stand out and feel compelling.

Only Jim receives any real exposition, and the film achieves that side of things awkwardly. The first act of Dawn cuts between Jim in France and Jim at home as he considers his future.

This form of non-linear storytelling can work – when it comes with a purpose. I see no particular reason to jump from Sheep Farmer Jim to Combat Jim, and the manner in which the movie skips between the two segments doesn’t connect well.

Eventually Dawn sticks with the WWI segments but matters don’t become more involving from there. Jim remains a bland character, and we don’t get to know his comrades especially well either.

This means that we just don’t much care about Jim or the others. Oh, we maintain a superficial attachment due to conditioning to invest in the fate of protagonists in war films, but beyond that superficial interest, it becomes tough to really worry about what will happen to Jim or anyone else here.

Much of Dawn just feels perfunctory. It ticks off all the usual genre boxes as expected but fails to do anything memorable with them.

Dawn remains competently made, and I find it hard to fault the performances or any of the technical aspects – well, other than Sean Tinnion’s cloying score, that is. The music telegraphs too many emotions and becomes a persistent nuisance.

Otherwise, Dawn delivers a professional affair. While it never soars, it doesn’t suffer from any obvious cinematic deficits.

Dawn simply fails to turn into a compelling drama, unfortunately. Although it doesn’t turn problematic, the movie just doesn’t click.

Before Dawn appears in an aspect ratio of 2.39:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. This turned into a largely satisfying presentation.

Overall sharpness worked fine. Darker shots could come across as a bit soft, but most of the movie exhibited positive accuracy.

No issues with jagged edges or moiré effects materialized, and I saw no edge haloes. Source flaws remained absent.

Colors tended toward a low-key mix of teal and amber. These didn’t excel but the image reproduced them as intended.

Blacks looked fairly deep, and shadows appeared appropriate, if a little dense at times. We wound up with a generally good picture.

In addition, the movie’s DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack fared nicely. Given all the combat scenes, the soundscape opened up to fill all the channels on a frequent basis.

At times, the information could seem a bit “speaker-specific” and the elements didn’t always mesh especially smoothly. Nonetheless, these issues remained modest and the soundfield usually became engaging and lively.

Audio quality came across well, with speech that appeared concise and natural. Music showed full tones.

Effects packed a good punch, with clean highs and deep lows. Despite the occasionally slightly awkward soundscape, this still became a strong soundtrack.

Under Behind the Scenes, we find six featurettes. We get “Anzac” (1:41), “Authenticity” (0:55), “The Director” (1:01), “In Production” (1:29), “The Set” (0:55) and “The Story” (0:53).

Across these, we hear from director Jordon Prince-Wright and actors Travis Jeffrey, Jordan Dulieu, Levi Miller, Myles Pollard, Ed Oxenbould, and Tim Franklin.

The reels look at story/characters, cast and performances, recreating war and attempts at accuracy, Prince-Wright’s work on the set, and related topics.

Given the brevity of each featurette, should you expect much? Nope, as the clips exist to promote the movie and they offer only minor production notes.

The disc opens with ads for Ride, Sting and The Last Stop in Yuma County. We also find the trailer for Before Dawn.

As a look at World War I combat, Before Dawn proves competent but unmemorable. Though the film seems professionally made and watchable, it lacks panache and never breaks out of its genre box to give us something dynamic. The Blu-ray offers generally solid picture and audio along with superficial bonus materials. I can’t find much about Dawn to severely criticize but I also fail to locate anything to make the film connect.