A Long Way Down Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

A Long Way Down Blu-ray Movie Review

Too Many Quirks

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 10, 2014

Novelist Bruce Hornby has a unique comic voice that is difficult to translate to film. The most successful adaptations of his novels to date are High Fidelity (2000), directed by Stephen Frears, and About a Boy (2002), directed by Chris and Paul Weitz. The common element in those films was a distinctive central character whose need to break free from a particular situation provided both humor and pathos. Both films required an actor with a special gift for walking a fine line between comedy and hostility to pull off the role (John Cusack in High Fidelity and Hugh Grant in About a Boy).

The latest adaptation of a Hornby novel, A Long Way Down, directed by French filmmaker Pascal Chaumeil (Heartbreaker), offers a much higher degree of difficulty, because it involves four major characters, all of whom have to perch on the same razor's edge between alienating the audience and winning them over. Co-produced by Hornby's wife, Amanda Posey, intelligently scripted by Jack Thorne (Skins) and featuring a superb cast, the film is lively enough and pretty to look at, but it never achieves the emotional depth that the subject matter deserves.

The subject matter, as it happens, is suicide. Hornby was inspired to write A Long Way Down (published in 2005) after learning that suicides are more common on certain nights of the year, including New Years Eve. The writer found himself contemplating the "popularity" of these occasions whenever he drove over a bridge near his home that was known as a spot where desperate individuals often went to end their lives. Hornby couldn't help wondering what might happen if more than one such person were to choose the same spot at the same time. What sort of encounter would ensue?

A Long Way Down opens on New Years Eve, when a former TV personality, Martin Sharp (Pierce Brosnan), whose career crashed and burned after he slept with a woman who looked 25 but turned out to be underage, makes his way to the roof of the Toppers Building carrying a ladder. The ladder is necessary to traverse the final, precarious distance to the rooftop's edge. To Martin's shock, however, he is not alone. A polite woman named Maureen Thompson (Toni Collette) asks if he'll be very long, because she'd like to follow him. While the two are negotiating their schedule, they are interrupted by a maniacal young woman with heavy but tear-streaked eye makeup, Jess Crichton (Imogen Poots), who runs shrieking for the building's edge. Purely out of instinct, Martin and Maureen restrain her. It's only then that they discover a young American man named J.J. Maguire (Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul), who has been sitting on the roof just out of sight, waiting for them all to finish so that he, too, can take the plunge.

After numerous mishaps and miscommunications, the quartet agrees to a pact proposed by Jess (who is always working an angle). All of them will postpone self-destruction until Valentine's Day, which is the next occasion on the calendar that is popular with suicides. The idea seems crazy—and it is—but the night is already so strange that everyone agrees.

Over the next six weeks, we learn more about the background of each member of this accidental club, aided in part by Jess's spying on her three compatriots to ensure they keep their part of the bargain (and maybe for other reasons). Their public profiles are raised when someone—it's never clear who—leaks the story to the tabloids about the four would-be suicides who saved each other, leading to interviews (which Jess treats as a goof, spinning wildly tales of an angelic "vision") and ultimately an appearance on Martin's former talk show, where he hopes to rehabilitate his shattered image. But Martin's hopes are dashed when his former co-host, the blandly cruel Penny (Rosamund Pike, who co-starred with Brosnan is his final Bond film, Die Another Day) keeps pressing him for details about his time in prison for statutory rape.

We already know Martin's story from his voiceover at the film's opening, but those of Maureen, Jess and J.J. provide new territory to explore, often with intriguing comic possibilities, especially with Jess as provocateur. (Her penchant for outrageous behavior make sense once we've met her father, played with admirable restraint by Sam Neill.) I do not want to reveal any detail about the backgrounds of these characters, because discovering them is part of the enjoyment that A Long Way Down has to offer. Where the script and direction fall short is in conveying a believable sense of how each character could have been drawn into such a black hole of despair that suicide appeared to be the only option. (Indeed, one character's choice of self-slaughter is almost impossible to believe, once you learn the circumstances.) The producers, screenwriter and director have all said that they didn't want to depress the audience, but they have overcompensated by effectively trivializing the very questions that prompted Nick Hornby to write the novel. Why do certain occasions emphasize people's sense of disconnection to such an extent that they feel their deaths won't matter to anyone, and what does it take to overcome that feeling? A drama can't address those questions effectively without first making the despair seem authentic, and not just something that can be dispelled by sharing the equivalent of a group hug with a few oddballs.

The actors make the most out of the material. Brosnan has a wonderful scene in which Martin describes living 24/7 with the humiliation of his disgrace that provides a moment of insight into how he became suicidal. Poots has moments, when Jess goes quiet, when she lets the character's pain radiate across her face. Collette demonstrates through Maureen's behavior how she lost touch with any sense of herself. Paul has the most difficult task, because J.J. doesn't know why he wants to die; he just knows that the world is unbearable.

Because the film is a comedy, it gives away nothing to reveal that the ending is essentially upbeat, but it's also unsatisfying. If you haven't conveyed a palpable sense of how your characters fell emotionally a long way down into darkness, it doesn't seem like such a triumph when they haul themselves back up into the light.

A Long Way Down Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Long Way Down was shot on the Arri Alexa by British cinematographer Ben Davis, whose extensive credits include Guardians of the Galaxy, Kick-Ass and the independent comedy I Give It a Year. Davis' experienced hand is evident in both the seamless green screen work that recreates the critical location of Toppers Tower from multiple angles, but also in the precise framing of the film's four main characters in their various configurations. Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, which was presumably sourced from digital files, reproduces the Alexa's trademark clean, detailed and film-like appearance, with an absence of noise or interference. Blacks are solid, and contrast reveals detail without overwhelming it.

The color palette varies widely with the moods of the protagonists, a shift that Davis and director Chaumeil demonstrate early in the film as the group watches the sun rise on New Year's Day just after making their pact, and their chilly surroundings acquire a golden glow. Similarly vibrant colors can be seen in the group's holiday in Tenerife and in the intensely lit TV studios. Colder tones reappear whenever the group separates into their individual lives.

Magnolia's releases have starting varying widely, but A Long Way Down has been placed on a BD-25 with an average bitrate of 21.00 Mbps (that's the exact measurement). Given the film's digital origination, the relatively low average rate doesn't seem to have created any compression-related artifacts. The film isn't a visual feast, but it's certainly a lot prettier to look at than anyone would expect from a story about suicide.

A Long Way Down Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A Long Way Down's 5.1 soundtrack is encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, and the mix gives priority to the well-recorded dialogue, including occasional voiceover, and Dario Marianelli's score, which, like his Oscar-winning score for Atonement, has been designed to blend with the film's sound effects. A few events give the surrounds a workout (e.g., a torrential downpour near the film's beginning), but for the most part the rear channels supply environmental ambiance and the heavy lifting occurs across the front soundstage.

A Long Way Down Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080i; 2.35:1; 8:07): The seven scenes aren't listed separately. The most interesting is the last, which is the film's original ending (though not designated as such).



• Outtakes (1080i; 2:35:1; 7:11): Lots of prop malfunctions and actors unable to keep a straight face.



• Making of A Long Way Down: Jumping in with Cast and Crew (1080p; 1.78:1; 8:26): Hornby, Thorne and Chaumeil discuss the story and script, while the principal cast describe their characters.



• On Toppers Tower: A Behind the Scenes View (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:36): A look at the green screen work used to create Toppers Tower. The physical set was an exact replica of the roof of an existing London skyscraper, but the director and DP could not get the angles and coverage they needed in the real location (to say nothing of freezing temperatures and concerns for the safety of the actors).



• Working with the Director (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:15): The English cast pay tribute to their French director.



• Adapting the Story (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:27): Hornby, Thorne, Chaumeil and select cast members discuss how the film differs from the novel.



• AXS TV: A Look at A Long Way Down (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:10): This is a typical AXS TV promo, in which the film's trailer is expanded with interview clips.



• Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:13).



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for The Two Faces of January, Frontera, Filth and Frank, as well as promos for the Chideo web service and AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back later for updates".

A Long Way Down Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Throughout the extras, the actors praise their French director for his understanding of the story's peculiarly British brand of dry, pessimistic humor. The problem, though, is that the British can crank out this sort of thing in their sleep, just as Americans can reliably crank out formulaic sitcoms. What has always made Nick Hornby's stories unusual, however, is the author's ability to expose the serious, even tragic inner life of his characters even as they inspire laughter at their oddities and quirks. A Long Way Down manages the latter better than most, but it never quite pulls off the former, despite everyone's best intentions. Certainly worth checking out if you're a fan of British humor. Whether it's worth adding to your library is a judgment best left to individual taste.