12 O'Clock Boys Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

12 O'Clock Boys Blu-ray Movie Review

Playing in the Streets

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 22, 2014

12 O'Clock Boys is a unique documentary by Lotfy Nathan (no, that's not a typo). It began as a student project at the Maryland Institute College of Art (or "MICA") but was then expanded to full length with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. The shooting lasted over a three-year period, as Nathan returned on weekend after weekend to continue pursuing his subject. Nominally that subject is the eccentric phenomenon of gangs who ride and race dirt bikes through the city streets of Baltimore, often to the consternation of citizens and law enforcement. According to local lore, the first such gang was The 12 O'Clock Boys, so named because of their prowess in doing wheelies so that the front wheels of their bikes pitched upward at twelve o'clock.

But by choosing to focus not on The 12 O'Clock Boys themselves, but on a kid named Pug, whose dream in life is to join the gang, and whose mother encourages him, because it's a better aspiration than dealing drugs, Nathan adds resonance to the subject beyond what would otherwise be an urban curiosity and a local nuisance. Through Pug's eyes, The 12 O'Clock Boys and other gangs like them become heros with something to offer, and Nathan attempts to capture that quality in cinematic terms. He also prompts the viewer to wonder why an obviously bright kid like Pug isn't being challenged to develop his talents for a better use and a more promising future.

Because of the Baltimore setting, comparisons are inevitable to The Wire, David Simon's epic TV drama depicting that city's decline as a study in the failure of American social policy in the latter half of the 20th Century. One review even called Nathan's film "The Wire with wheelies". But 12 O'Clock Boys is a very different experience. It suggests much more than it shows, and it uses the visual poetry of dirt bike riders, captured in languorous slow motion, as a powerful metaphor for the yearning—for pride, for achievement, for something beyond poverty and urban decay—that inspires these riders to pursue such a hazardous pastime. Where The Wire tried to analyze the causes of the city's decline and the lack of meaningful opportunity for its youth, director Nathan leaves such questions hovering at the edge of the frame. He's more interested in conveying the texture of Pug's dirt bike dreams than in psychoanalyzing where they came from.

Pug is the central character of 12 O'Clock Boys, and Nathan follows him over the course of three years, during which he visibly transforms from a precocious kid to someone who has a sense of himself as a young man, even though he's barely a teenager. Pug doesn't talk much—on the commentary, Nathan says that he could never understand why the director kept pointing the camera at him rather than the bike riders—and when he does talk, he doesn't say much about himself except in the boastful terms of a child trying to mimic some of the behavior he sees around him in young men. He's obviously bright, too much so for the assembly-line school system, where boredom and petty conflicts lead to fighting and Pug is quickly tagged as a problem kid. As the years go by, Pug's absences from school become more frequent. At the same time, he thinks of becoming a veterinarian some day. His interest in animals and knowledge of the animal kingdom are seemingly inexhaustible.

A second major figure in the film is Pug's mother, Coco. Where Nathan has to work to get Pug to open up, Coco shares easily without inhibition, as if she had been waiting for someone to come along and point a camera in her direction. (Nathan says in the commentary that Coco opened up from the moment he met her.) She talks about herself, her history, her children and her hopes. Over the three-year period of filming, her frustration with Pug increases visibly as he matures and her ability to influence him diminishes accordingly. Part of her change in attitude no doubt results from a family loss (through illness) that also has a major impact on Pug.

A third major character in 12 O'Clock Boys is Steven, whose participation was critical to obtaining the extraordinary footage of the dirt bike riders that appears throughout the film. An intense and voluble figure who knows the world of the dirt bike gangs intimately—exactly how is never explained—Steven drives Nathan all over Baltimore in his panel truck, following the action, guiding him through this underground world, providing insight and history. Steven himself is not a gang member, at least not currently, and he lives in a nicely appointed house in a gentrified part of the city that Pug and other kids are welcome to visit. On weekends Steven sometimes takes a small group into the country to train them in dirt bike riding. Steven is a friend and a mentor to boys like Pug who aspire to be 12 O'Clock Boys.

(As the extras make clear, Nathan made a deliberate decision to omit a lot of "hard" information that a typical documentary might have included, choosing to focus instead on the emotional core of the renegade sport that had so captured Pug's attention. One must consult the extras to learn, for example, that Steven earns a good living as a longshoreman or that Coco works as a healthcare aide.)

If Pug's face is the emotional center of 12 O'Clock Boys, the visual core is the dreamy slow-motion footage of bike riders that Nathan and one of his operators, John Benam, captured using a Phantom camera, which is used by some networks for instant replay in sporting events. The Phantom footage allows Nathan to represent the sensation described by some of the riders he interviews, where time stands still and their troubles fall away. In these sequences, the allure of urban dirt bike riding comes alive on screen.

12 O'Clock Boys does not reach a climax or a conclusion. It doesn't leave you with any firm sense of the direction that Pug's life will take. It does, however, illustrate the substantial obstacles between a bright and ambitious youngster and something as seemingly modest as riding a dirt bike.

12 O'Clock Boys Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

12 O'Clock Boys was shot digitally, with both Nathan and several other operators working the camera. Nathan himself took the credit as cinematographer. Except for the slow-motion sequences shot with the professional grade Phantom unit, no information was available regarding the type of equipment used, but there is a noticeable uptick in sharpness, color saturation and detail in the Phantom sequences as compared to the rest of the film. This is not to say that the rest of the film is lacking, just that the Phantom is a superb instrument and Benam's work with it is sensational. Post-production on a digital intermediate has integrated the sources as smoothly as possible. Oscilloscope's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced from digital files.

In general, the non-Phantom footage is of very good quality, as long as one makes allowances for the spontaneous nature of documentary photography. Some of the scenes shot at night, particularly from a distance, are grainy and indistinct due to lack of sufficient light. Shots sometimes lose focus for a moment or two, especially when following Pug as he suddenly charges off in one direction or another. None of this indicates any fault in the Blu-ray, however. When the image capture is pristine, as it is in the Phantom-photographed sequences, the Blu-ray is flawless.

At 75 minutes, the film has been compressed onto a BD-25 with an average bitrate of 25.56 Mbps, which is quite good for digitally originated material. Artifacts are not an issue.

12 O'Clock Boys Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's soundtrack is available in two lossless options, a 5.1 mix in DTS-HD MA and a 2.0 PCM mix. Given the film's documentary style, the 5.1 mix might seem to be overkill, since the interviews are the essential part of the soundtrack. Then again, because of the circumstances under which they were recorded, many of the interviews aren't sufficiently audible to be understood without subtitles, which director Nathan has added for many scenes where the speaker either cannot be heard or cannot be understood (Baltimore's regional accent being both thick and distinctive). With speech already blurred, the sound mixers have taken the liberty of spreading out other sounds more than they might have, so that ambient noise, car and motorcycle engines, police sirens, even just the distant rumble of urban traffic become more of a presence than one might otherwise expect in a documentary. The eclectic score by Joe Miller is used sparingly but effectively.

12 O'Clock Boys Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Video Commentary with Director Lotfy Nathan: "Director Lotfy Nathan discusses key characters and his shooting style in 12 O'Clock Boys. Recorded at Oscilloscope in December 2013." This is what is often called "scene-specific" commentary, because it is organized by topic and plays against selected sequences. The designation of the commentary as "video" is slightly misleading, as no additional video accompanies the commentary. A "play all" function is included.
• 1. Pug (6:13)
• 2. Coco (4:08)
• 3. Steven (8:00)
• 4. Camerawork (3:15)



• Outtakes (1080p; 1.78:1): These are what are usually called "deleted scenes". Nathan discusses the one entitled "Coco's Future" in his commentary.
• "I'm a Grown Ass Man" (2:30)
• Pug's Grill (1:57)
• Coco and Pug's Day Out (2:15)
• Coco's Future (2:04)



• "Bad Bitches Drop It Low" (GoPro Video) (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:03): Produced by Mighty Mark and featuring TT The Artist and Sheila D Yeah.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:15).



• Oscilloscope Releases: In addition to the trailers below, the disc plays a general trailer for Oscilloscope Laboratories at startup.
• Dark Days
• Beautiful Losers
• Shut Up and Play the Hits
• Gunnin' for That #1 Spot

12 O'Clock Boys Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Like so many of Oscilloscope's releases, 12 O'Clock Boys is difficult to classify. It discovers moments of great beauty and fascination in a world where one does not expect to find much of either. At the same time, it also presents substantial evidence—through news reports, through an interview with someone who was injured in a bike accident, through some of the biking footage itself—that dirt bike gangs endanger their own lives and those of the public. Still, the fascination of these rebels is as strong now as it was when Marlon Brando rode into town in The Wild One, especially if you're a smart young man who can sense that the "official" channels of success and acceptance are already closed to you. Nathan's documentary is certainly a visual poem about the thrill of riding dirt bikes, but it's also rife with subtext. Recommended for those with a taste for the unusual.