Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.5
Overall		4.5

Against All Odds Blu-ray Movie Review

Out of the Eighties—and It's Still About Owning Land

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 3, 2012

In the summer of 1984, you couldn't tune into MTV without encountering the video for Phil Collins' "Take a Look at Me Now", his Oscar-nominated and Grammy-winning theme to Against All Odds. The song is an insistent ballad, and the video adroitly reconstructed footage from the film to make it look like an intense love story—which, at one level, it is. But not that kind of love story. When the first strains of Collins' piano gently waft into the film's soundtrack at the end, the song serves as an ironic commentary on the futility of love (or any other virtue) among the hopelessly corrupt and damaged people at the story's core. Inspired by the 1947 film Out of the Past, director Taylor Hackford's Against All Odds is, as he himself put it, a film noir in bright sunlight. Even the people who start out with good intentions find themselves led astray by people who'd scoff at the notion. Ultimately, the film is like an F. Scott Fitzgerald story about the very rich who, it turns out, really are different from you and me, because their wealth allows them to get away with just about anything.

In this century, Ray has been Taylor Hackford's only success, but there was a time when the director made a string of hits: An Officer and a Gentleman, White Knights and Against All Odds. Even if the last one's box office was modest, the soundtrack sales were major. Unfortunately, the Phil Collins video is one of the extras not included on Image Entertainment's Blu-ray (although it was on the original Sony DVD), but Image and Sony have done a fine job with the film itself, which features a career-changing lead performance by Jeff Bridges and powerful supporting work from James Woods, Rachel Ward, Swoozie Kurtz, Saul Rubinek, a commanding Richard Widmark and, crucially, an original star of Out of the Past, Jane Greer, who is superb.

Terry Brogan (Bridges), a professional football player for the L.A. Outlaws (a fictional team loosely based on the Raiders), returns for the new season after being sidelined with a badly injured shoulder, but the head coach (Bill McKinney) correctly assesses that Brogan isn't ready to play and cuts him from the team. Under the team's current owner, Mrs. Wyler (Greer), a wealthy widow, football is strictly business and players are no more than assets. Brogan is no longer an asset worth keeping, despite the efforts of his friend and trainer, Hank Sully (Alex Karras). Sully resents the current management philosophy, because he remembers how things were run when Mr. Wyler was alive. Mrs. Wyler's principal interest is real estate—at the moment, Wyler Canyon, a massive hilltop development overlooking Los Angeles. (The production used the site of what is now the Getty Museum.)

Brogan tries to get help from his long-time lawyer, Steve Kirsch (Saul Rubinek), but Mrs. Wyler now owns him too. Kirsch, who'd been far too effective negotiating favorable contracts for players, has been hired by the law firm run by Mrs. Wyler's lawyer, Ben Caxton (Widmark). Since the firm represents the team, Kirsch has to drop his player-clients, and he's all too happy to do so, because Caxton's firm is an entree to the city's elite. Caxton himself is the kind of lawyer who doesn't practice law. His clients hire him for his connections. Right now, he's helping Mrs. Wyler obtain the necessary zoning variance and environmental approvals for Wyler Canyon over the objections of local interests led by City Councilman Bob Soames (Allen Williams).

Kirsch's secretary, Edie (Swoosie Kurtz), would love to help Brogan, but there's nothing she can do. She'd be happy to date him, but that's the furthest thing from Brogan's mind. Broke, with no prospects or savings and big bills to pay, Brogan is desperate—and all too conveniently an unconventional job offer appears. A friend from Brogan's past, Jake Wise (Woods), offers Brogan a handsome salary and all expenses paid to track down Jake's ex-girlfriend, Jessie (Ward), who just happens to be Mrs. Wyler's daughter. Jake was a small-time bookie when Brogan used to know him, but now he's a slick club owner who takes big bets for high rollers. He's accompanied everywhere by a taciturn bodyguard named Tommy (Dorian Harewood), seems to know every angle and keeps one step ahead of the game at all times. But Jessie Wyler got to him, and now he wants her found.

Why hire a football player to find a missing rich girl? That story element may at first seem to be nothing more than a plot device, but it goes to the heart of who Jake is and the complexities of the relationship between him and Brogan, which are essential to how the story unfolds. In a sharp piece of screenwriting by Eric Hughes (jointly developed with director Hackford), we're immediately drawn into the strange connections between the player and the gambler, when Jake dares Brogan into a race on Sunset Boulevard from the beach to Jake's club, and they go speeding along in a Porsche and a Ferrari.

The sequence became famous, and it still holds up, because director Hackford and a bevy of Hollywood's top stunt men worked with the L.A.P.D. to shut down part of Sunset on successive weekends and the Fourth of July, then staged the car chase for real at high speed with no tricks—and Woods and Bridges did a lot of their own driving. The sequence feels dangerous, because it was, as Jake and Brogan keep pushing each other into ever more perilous straits. Among other things, their race reveals that Jake is a "risk junkie"; he can't help putting himself in situations from which only a daredevil "Hail Mary" stunt can possibly extract him. Sending a handsome football player after his girlfriend is just one more high-stakes gamble.

Smelling trouble in Jake's offer, Brogan first visits Mrs. Wyler in a vain attempt to get reinstated on the team. She declines, but makes him the same offer that Jake did: find her daughter, but don't tell Jake. Not having any options, and not exactly sure what he'll do if he finds Jessie, Brogan leaves for Mexico. Eventually he finds her in the resort town of Cozumel. By this point Brogan is fascinated with this rich girl who's bewitched his old friend. As for Jessie, the chief attraction for her in a man is whether he's someone of which her mother would disapprove. Jake, who's a criminal, fit the bill; so does Brogan, who's an ex-player on the team her mother owns. They quickly fall into an affair.

In these happy early days of love, Brogan and Jessie travel around Mexico, so that Brogan can appear to be looking for her still. But it turns out they're not alone. Someone is following them, maybe for Jake, maybe for Mrs. Wyler. At the spectacular Mayan ruins at Chichén Itzá, a deadly confrontation occurs, and a spooked Jessie goes rushing back to Los Angeles for protection. Brogan follows her, but nothing is the same now that he and Jessie have left the idyllic serenity of the Mexican countryside for the unforgiving steel and glass of L.A. Even the few people Brogan could trust before are no longer available to him. Plots, setups, double-crosses, secret alliances and murders pile up quickly in a series of collisions that leave almost nothing undamaged or untouched. Except for Wyler Canyon, of course. As in Chinatown, real estate always prevails.

On the commentary tracks, Hackford repeatedly describes the film as an exploration of where real power lies in contemporary L.A. Terry Brogan begins the film thinking that he's a somebody, because he's a football star. Throughout the film, he's repeatedly and often brutally shown that he's a highly paid nobody who can easily be replaced. "You're so innocent!" Jessie tells him at one point. By the end, he's lost that innocence.

Against All Odds Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Consistent with the notion of "a film noir with bright sun", cinematographer Donald Thorin (who also shot An Officer and a Gentleman for director Hackford) gave Against All Odds a bright colorful look that is well-represented on Image's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. Strong contrast levels accentuate the colors, but not at the expense of detail. By today's digitally enhanced standards, the image might be considered "soft", but it's still detailed enough so that, for example, when Brogan and Jessie are on top of one of the pyramids at Chichén Itzá, you can see the details of other visitors' interactions on the ground in the distance behind them. A light grain pattern is visible but not intrusive, and black levels are good enough so that, e.g., a scene where Tommy emerges from shadow to surprise Brogan works as intended. I did not observe any high-frequency filtering or transfer-induced ringing (although the illumination of bright sunlight at some angles can create a haloing effect that might be mistaken for ringing). Despite Image's continued addiction to BD-25s for two-hour-plus films with multiple audio tracks, I did not spot any obvious compression-related artifacts. Indeed, the only criticism I have of the disc is some light banding that was so transient and occasional that most viewers may not notice it.

Against All Odds Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Against All Odds was released to theaters in Dolby Surround. The 1999 "Special Edition" DVD offered a choice between the original mix and a 4.0 mix consisting of the surround track's discrete elements in separate channels (left, center, right, mono surround). The DTS lossless 5.1 track on the Blu-ray is a more recent remix that has been handled thoughtfully and with care. Dialogue and effects remain largely in front, which is where they have always been, and the dialogue is clear. The real impact of the remix and lossless presentation is to detach the distinctive musical track and expand it into its own space where it serves as a kind of commentary on the action. The score was a joint creation of Michel Colombier and guitarist Larry Carlton, who is widely considered one of the great American guitar players for work that includes Steely Dan's The Royal Scam and his Grammy-winning contribution to the theme for Hill Street Blues. For Against All Odds, Carlton contributed guitar solos at critical portions that sound nothing like film music. (The only similar-sounding film I know is Rush, which was scored by Eric Clapton.) I've always been aware of the film's distinctive sound, but never before have I heard it with such presence and urgency. Even if you've seen the film before, I recommend hearing it again on this Blu-ray.

Against All Odds Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from the 1999 "special edition" DVD released by Sony, with the unfortunate omission of the two music videos for Phil Collins' "Against All Odds" and King Creole and the Coconuts' "My Male Curiosity", which contains the full performance seen and heard only in fragments in the film.

• Commentary with Director Taylor Hackford and Actors Jeff Bridges and James Woods: The three collaborators chat like the old friends they have remained, and the commentary sometimes gets boisterous (especially when they're reminiscing about shooting the club scene featuring King Creole and the Coconuts). Hackford tends to discuss the story (on his solo commentary for The Devil's Advocate, he virtually summarized the film), but Bridges and Woods frequently pull the discussion toward the process of shooting the movie and the nuts and bolts of acting. It's a lively commentary, well worth hearing.



• Commentary with Director Taylor Hackford and Screenwriter Eric Hughes: Hackford recorded this commentary with Hughes the day after doing the commentary with his actors. He characterizes it as more "technical", which is accurate in the sense that he and Hughes don't stick as closely to the action on-screen. At the outset, for example, they describe in detail how the project was developed over a two-year period at Paramount, where Hackford made An Officer and a Gentleman, then had the plug pulled on it well after pre-production was underway, with a team assembled, locations scouted, costumes designed, etc. (The regime at Paramount was changing, and the executive who had championed the project, Don Simpson, had been fired.) Hackford's agent saved the film by quickly getting it reestablished at Columbia, before the team that Hackford had assembled could fall apart. If you've ever wondered what a good agent does, this is an example.
  
  Hackford and Hughes also discuss the film's underlying themes and the stylistic choices they consciously made so that the film wouldn't "date". (Hughes was present on the set throughout.)



• Deleted Scenes (SD; 1.33:1; 23:09): There are seven scenes, with optional commentary by Hackford. Hackford also provides a general introduction that, after so many years of deleted scene entries on DVDs and Blu-rays, sounds almost quaint in its explanation of why directors make cuts. All seven scenes are interesting, especially a long one involving a surprise appearance by Jake and Tommy in Mexico, which would have provided a more immediate reason for Brogan and Jessie to leave Cozumel. An additional scene between Brogan and Jessie at Chichén Itzá is also quite good but was appropriately cut for both length and pacing.



• Theatrical Trailer (HD, 1080p; 1.33:1, centered; 1:33): As nice as it is to have the trailer in hi-def, the source is in pretty rough shape.

Against All Odds Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Jeff Bridges who appeared so memorably in Against All Odds recently made a kind of spectral return to theaters, because the makers of TRON: Legacy used this film as a reference for Bridges' younger self in the character of CLU. CLU was interesting, but Terry Brogan was more so: basically decent but not very bright, and caught up in something way out of his league (no pun intended). The most effective hero for a film noir is a sap we happen to like, whether it's Fred MacMurray or William Hurt—or Jeff Bridges. Because we like them, it's all the more painful when they make a mess of things, as they always do. The film and the disc are both highly recommended.