Having been completely won over to three-dimensional digital projection by last year’s Beowulf 3D, I bought a ticket for U2 3D expecting a similarly all-encompassing experience. But while thoroughly entertaining, this concert film is not the same sort of 3D experience. If you haven’t seen Beowulf 3D, you’ll be pretty impressed by U2 3D; if you have, you’ll find much lacking.

The sturdy 3D glasses were the same as for Beowulf 3D; otherwise, the element whose absence was most glaring was that of consistency. To be fair, the shots were taken from several performances during U2’s recent tour of South America, edited together to appear as if they are from a single concert in Buenos Aires, in an auditorium that seems to hold a kazillion agitated, responsive audience members. Some shots are clean and clear, with a remarkable feeling of depth; others seem slightly soft, with a loss of detail, depth, and immediacy. Although, unlike in most such films, few shots seem to have been set up merely to show off the 3D effect, there are times when foreground and background are at distinctly different distances from the viewer. This was most noticeable when someone in the foreground raised a waving arm -- it looked as if the arm belonged to someone in the audience of the theater I was sitting in, and gave me a sense that the stage was some distance away. Such moments are awesome.

The one shot that does seem to have been included purely for effect is when Bono, the band’s charismatic lead singer, stretches out his hand, like a rescuer on a Coast Guard boat, to the audience. This vividly produces the desired effect of Bono stretching out his hand to you. For most of the rest of the film, the cameras smoothly swoop and glide around the stage and out into the audience -- no jittering handheld work here. Sometimes the motion seems excessive, sometimes effective.

The sound is first class. It’s not a case of "like being there" -- it’s better than that. If you’ve ever been to an event with an audience as large as this one, you know that most of what you hear are the people around you. While the music may be amplified to or beyond the point of serious distortion, it can’t drown out the crowd. You go for the event, not for the music. U2 3D allows us to hear the music first, the audience second -- an experience you’d be able to have at the concert only if you were onstage with the band. All of the instruments are clean and well balanced. There is often, though not always, an unexpected transparency to the sound that allows you to hear "into" the music. The audience is prominent in the mix, and wraps completely around the sides and rear of the soundstage. I felt surrounded by it, as I would have at the concert, except that it is more tightly controlled, and is always kept below the level of the music.

The concert itself left me pondering motives. I believe in peace and human rights as much as Bono does, but U2 pounds its message home in such a way that I found it obnoxious and jarring. Rather than just relying on the music and some talk between numbers, the band has a gigantic set of screens behind it that produce appropriate images, just in case you don’t get it. It’s hard to be subtle in such a gigantic venue, but do we really need such messages as "Coexist" spelled out using the crescent moon, the Star of David, and the cross? Or the UN Bill of Rights, scrolled onscreen and spoken through the onsite speakers? U2’s bird of peace arrives with full armament. The film’s directors, Catherine Owens and Mark Pelllington, have also gone for the jugular during the final number by post-producing titles that stand out in front of the band. The whole thing left me wanting to smite for the right instead of suing for peace.

On the plus side, U2 has been together three decades now. They’re a really tight band that, with the Rolling Stones, is one of the most reliable performing groups still playing. It has arguably the best living lead guitar player ever in The Edge, and you’d have to pay a lot more than the admission price to U2 3D to see and hear him and the band in concert -- a lot less clearly than you can here. If you can take with a grain of salt the message that comes with the package, and can overlook the inconsistent filming as a byproduct of the genre, there is much to enjoy along the way.

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