Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

4:44: Last Day on Earth Blu-ray Movie Review

The End of the World: Brought to You by Skype

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater July 22, 2012

Seeing as how director Abel Ferrara got his start making seedy, violent exploitation movies about figurative worms in the Big Apple—1979's Driller Killer, 1981's rape-revenge shoot-em-up Ms. 45, 1990's druggy King of New York—you'd think his latest film, 4:44 Last Day on Earth, would be a grimy, bloody, coked-up take on the apocalyptic genre that's been so popular lately. Not so. In fact, 4:44 is by far the most prosaic of the recent end-of-it-all dramas. Between Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse, and Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, we've been visually and emotionally overwhelmed this past year by provocative auteurist takes on The End, and Last Day on Earth simply pales in comparison. Granted, Ferrera's is a much smaller-scaled film—a low-budget, theater-like production set almost entirely in one location—but its real failing is how rote it feels, reciting we get it already arguments for the importance of environmental protection and tamely observing its characters going through the expected we're all gonna die emotions. Who knew the utter annihilation of life on Earth could be so boring?

Last goodbyes...

The cataclysmic scenario invoked here is one of our own doing. When the film opens, a TV broadcast informs us that the "rapid decline of the Earth's ozone layer" has left the planet vulnerable to radiation from the sun. Scientists predict that in fourteen hours and forty-four minutes, at approximately 4:44 a.m.—numerology much?—the last vestiges of our atmospheric shield will disappear, causing the planet to be presumably engulfed in flames. The film's scientific grounding is dodgy at best—yes, the ozone is being depleted, no, it isn't going to vanish entirely overnight—but to give the disaster some semblance of realism, Ferrera uses footage from a Charlie Rose interview with Al Gore, discussing the perils of global warming.

One character even sadly remarks, "Al Gore was right." There are also integrated film clips of the Dalai Lama talking about the importance of human responsibility, and references to the extinction of Eastern Island's civilization due to carelessly depleted resources. It all comes across as needlessly didactic, like an alarmist Discovery Channel documentary in narrative film form. If you agree, as most reasonable people do, that we should be curbing emissions and doing our best to conserve, the choir-preaching will certainly get tiring. Does Ferrara actually think there are masses of global warming deniers queueing up to see an enviro-apocalyptic indie movie?

The story that follows isn't much more nuanced. Willem Defoe—in his third Ferrara film, after New Rose Hotel and Go Go Tales—plays Cisco, a middle-aged New York actor who lives in a Manhattan studio loft with his much-younger girlfriend, Skye (Shanyn Leigh, Ferrera's girlfriend), a painter of Pollack-like canvas splatters. Neither of them seems too plussed at first that the planet is about to be enveloped in an all-devouring fireball. They make love, slowly, passionately, in a self-indulgent sex scene that goes on for a minute too long. Afterwards, Skye goes about working on her latest piece, while listening on her iPad to a Buddhist guru-type give an essentially metaphysical nihilist lecture on how there is no physical existence outside the mind. From start to are-you-kidding-me finish, the film is suffused with a kind of New Age-y, we'll all become angels absorbed in the light placating.

In the other room, Cisco watches the news and chats with old friends on Skype. If Ferrara gets one thing right here, it's his noting of the role that new socially connective technologies play in our lives. In the film's most successful scene, Cisco orders takeout—yes, restaurants are inexplicably still open— and, realizing that he has an opportunity for kindness, allows the depressed-looking delivery boy to use the computer to contact his family in Vietnam. Later, however, Skye catches Cisco videochatting with his bitchy ex, which triggers the film's central but half-baked romantic conflict. While Skye cries to her mom (Anita Pallenberg) about how much she hates him sometimes, Cisco—two years clean—wanders into the streets, tempted to go out in a woozy heroin daze. (Look out for the blink-and-you'll-miss-it Paz de la Huerta cameo.) But of course he won't. Wake me up when the Earth explodes.

For as much as Cisco and Skye scream at each other, 4:44 is dramatically dull, the script unable to be redeemed by Defoe and Leigh's decent performances. The point that Ferrara finally arrives at is seemingly that we need to you know, really love each other, man. It's the old "gather ye rosebuds while ye may" business—don't let time get away from you!—and though this is as acceptable a theme as any, Ferrara develops it in a rather blunt and uninteresting way. When the film concludes, with one of the worst closing lines I've heard in a while, we're left with nothing to question or consider beyond how it's possible to make such a superficial film about The End.

At least it's over fast, moving briskly through its scant 82-minutes. That said, the brief runtime is also something of a curse. You get the feeling Last Day on Earth should've been a good twenty minutes longer—more developed, larger in scope—or else significantly shorter. As it stands, it's an experiment in low-budget apocalyptic moviemaking that doesn't quite work.

4:44: Last Day on Earth Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shot digitally with the capable Red One MX camera, 4:44 Last Day on Earth features a mostly satisfying 1080p/AVC encode, although some of the film's visual effects shots are seriously bad. Let's start with the good; clarity is usually excellent. The texture of Willem Defoe's face, for example— with its iconically angular lines and creases—is finely reproduced, with sharp high definition detail visible in all closeups. Clothing patterns, paint spatters, and props—all are nicely rendered too. Color-wise, the film goes for a very realistic look, and the image has good density, with deep blacks and strong- but-not-too-pushed contrast. Skin tones are natural as well. When confined to the apartment, the picture is great. Out on the green-screened balcony, however? Not so much. The composite blending just doesn't look natural—see the scene where Defoe leans over the ledge, peering down at a dead body below—and worse, there's strong banding in the nighttime sky, the gradient of dark blues turned into a noticeable stair-step pattern. In one or two effects shots, I even spotted some macroblocking. And I'm not even talking about the standard definition stock footage that Ferrara uses to show riots and celebrations and religious ceremonies across the globe. Given that this is a low-budge movie, most of the picture quality quirks are understandable, and while they're rarely distracting, they're certainly there if you're looking for 'em.

4:44: Last Day on Earth Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

IFC gives us two audio options here, a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track—the default, and the one you'll want to stick with if you have a home theater setup—and an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 stereo mix. Both more than adequately handle the film's limited aural requirements. This is a dialogue-driven movie, through and through, and the characters' conversations are always clear, balanced, and easy to understand. Rear channel output in the multi-channel mix is limited to extremely quiet ambience—wind, mostly—and the film's minimal use of incidental music is kept low-key. The only time the track gets to really rumble is during the aurora over New York that precipitates The End, quaking with low-end subwoofer pulses. The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

4:44: Last Day on Earth Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The lone extra on the disc is a high definition theatrical trailer.

4:44: Last Day on Earth Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is how the world ends: not with a bang, but with a snooze. 4:44 Last Day on Earth is by far the most disappointing of recent apocalyptic dramas—too preachy, too metaphysically wishy-washy, too dramatically undercooked. It's basically a low-budget Melancholia with crap visual effects and an utterly mundane take on the global extinguishing of life. If you're a longtime Abel Ferrara/Willem Defoe fan you may feel obligated to check out the film, but curb your expectations beforehand. A Blu-ray purchase just isn't worth it here; streaming or renting is your best bet.