Pride

The movie "Pride," directed by Matthew Warchus and written by Stephen Beresford, is based on real people and events that took place in 1984, but its glossy flow and pitch-perfect beats have all the shapely perfection of a carefully wrought fiction. The movie is another example of briskly ebullient British filmmaking in which underdogs face long odds and have a marvellous time at it, falling neatly into the same category as "The Full Monty," "Brassed Off," and other Britflicks of similar ilk.

Though "Pride" is based on actual events, certain elements feel fictional, such as the surreptitious, sometimes nearly panicked presence of a young activist named Joe (George MacKay), a lad who is deeply in the closet at home but, at age 20 -- and still not of legal age to consent to gay sex -- finally beginning to edge out of his personal closet of fear and denial.

In point of fact, Joe is created of whole cloth, added as a means for the audience to grasp the social and political complexities of the time. The film is set in the U.K.; Margaret Thatcher (she of the famous quote that there is "no such thing as society") is out to break a mining strike. Sympathetic to the mines' plight, Mark Ashton -- the leader of a gay rights group in London -- determines that sexual minorities and the miners have a common cause in resisting the demonization they suffer at the hands of the press and the legislative persecutions of the government. When Ashton's organization reaches out to a community of miner in South Wales, an unlikely alliance is forged that benefits both groups --and dispels the notion of the frightening, hateful "other," as the characters all come to know and respect their new friends.

The Blu-ray offers an interview-packed featurette, "Pride - The True Story," that boasts the participation of the real people the movie depicts, as well as the actors who portray them. One of the actual people, Sian James, is now an MP ("Member of Parliament," the equivalent of a member of Congress here); she, too, appears in the featurette, along with actors Dominic West, Dai Donovan (who plays the spokesman for the miners), Dominic West, Bill Nighy, the enormously charismatic Imelda Staunton, and American actor Ben Schnetzer, who plays Ashton. ("Looking" co-star Russell Tovey also appears in a cameo.)

The Brits have the feel-good film down to a formula, and they follow that formula here -- sometimes a little schematically, but it doesn't matter. At the end, despite the historical necessity of showing how the strike turned out (Thatcher succeeded in crushing the strike), you still feel good.

Aside from the featurette, there are six deleted and extended scenes (more extended than deleted), as well as a raft of theatrical trailers.

"Pride"
Blu-ray
$34.99
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/discanddigital