American Son Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

American Son Blu-ray Movie Review

A hero in love.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman April 4, 2013

I'm going to Iraq.

American Son takes a simple dramatic premise -- a young man is being shipped overseas for a combat tour of duty, and he has only hours home to spend as he wishes -- and desperately tries to mold it into a deeper, more complex, and inwardly exploratory drama about life, its precious moments, and the very real sense of frailty and brevity there is to it all. Unfortunately, the picture doesn't always work as nobly intended. Director Neil Abramson's (Ringmaster) American Son sometimes succeeds but sometimes struggles to dig all that far below the surface, toying with base emotions but never really driving to the heart of its characters or finding a true sense of worth to the drama that surrounds them. It's all very much a superficial experience, one that aims high and strives for something good but that never does find the depth the material commands and the story seems wanting to explore. It's a decent enough movie, though, but one that doesn't deliver on the sort of emotional needs required to elevate it amongst the finest Human Dramas set against the backdrop of impending wartime deployment.

Together.

Marine rifleman Mike (Nick Cannon) is set to be deployed to Iraq, but he's granted a 96-hour leave of absence to go home for Thanksgiving before heading overseas. One the bus trip back, he meets a beautiful young passenger named Cristina (Melonie Diaz) whom he charms, sits beside, and grows to like quite a bit, and she him. Upon arriving home, he spends some time with his best friend Jake (Matt O'Leary), his mother Donna (April Grace) and her husband Dale (Tom Sizemore), and his biological father Eddie (Chi McBride) with whom Mike tries to locate and straighten up his wayward brother. His time is mostly occupied by thinking about and spending more and more time with Cristina. He meets her parents and the two grow quite fond of one another, their hours together yielding a special, quick-growing romance that only the fog of war, the distance of foreign shores, and dishonesty about a coming deployment could threaten.

American Son is at its best in a short but incredibly effective and moving sequence that captures the essence of the story and the film's gentle anti-war, pro-humanity posture. Mike and his girlfriend Cristina visit a neighborhood disabled veteran recently returned from Iraq. He appears missing a leg and wearing a shirt that says, "I went to Iraq and all I got was crippled." He efforts to move around as well as he can, to walk alongside Mike as he cuts the grass. Though the veteran comes across as largely jovial and full of spirit and life, the undercurrent of the scene is chilling, foreshadowing not necessarily what may or may not happen to Mike once he deploys but bringing home the realities of the war in a very real, tangible, up-front sort of way that epitomizes the film's emotions and emphasizes all of the coming dramatic currents the more the time ticks away towards Mike's departure. It's the scene's effective balance between subtly foreshadowing the dangers of war and bringing the immediacy of the realities of Mike's future to the forefront of the film that makes it work in the broader dramatic context. It's also American Son's finest sequence, but even afterward there's a disappointing absence of real, gut-wrenching emotion as the movie seems to maneuver through its paces rather than find a genuine sense of grief and pending absence at Mike's imminent deployment.

The film proves a little more effective at painting the realities of life and love more so than the effects of war, or coming war, on the human condition. Mike's developing relationship with Cristina is captured well, smartly developed and thoroughly so even within the constraints of the film's rather short runtime. It captures a very real essence of how quickly something good may form and how equally fast it may fall apart, not because of a sudden incompatibility between new lovers but because of the realities of the world, how the pulls of life, past decisions, and decades of history can come between even the tightest bonds, the most precious ties, even soul mates. It's the foreknowledge of the pending fracture of the relationship that hurts the most, not the realities of war, as well and as simply as those may be captured in the film in the above referenced disabled veteran sequence. Nick Cannon and Melonie Diaz make a smart, likable, believably in-love pair, and the doubts around the survivability of their relationship define the film more so than Mike's individual journey. This is a tale more of the joys of togetherness and the pains of separation. Cannon and Diaz's chemistry together goes a long way in shaping the movie's core value system and plot line, their genuine relationship both the spark that lights the movie and the inevitable fizzle that dramatically darkens it.

American Son Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

American Son easily ranks amongst the very best video presentations released to Blu-ray under the Echo Bridge label. It's also one of the most recently made movies to fall to the studio under the Miramax banner. This 1.78:1 high definition presentation looks fantastic, generally. There's a handsome film-like texture to the image, with light, consistent grain hovering above and helping to accentuate the pure, accurate details below. The image is quite crisp and nicely defined, with only a hint of nearly missable softness to several scenes. Textures find a very nice, natural appearance and definition, from faces to clothes and all of the various backgrounds throughout the film. Colors are a little dull, but by filmmaker design. The palette is steady and even under the film's parameters. Black levels rarely cause any problem, and flesh tones are fine if not slightly pale in only a few shots. There are no major flaws or unwanted digital tweaks to be found. This is an enjoyable and rock-solid presentation from Echo Bridge that stands up against the many of the finer transfers from bigger studios.

American Son Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

American Son's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack isn't quite on the same level of excellence as the video transfer, but it's a good complimentary piece. There's a generally pure presence to music, with smooth delivery, even spacing, and gentle surround immersion. There's a satisfyingly sloppy low end pulse to in-car, bass-heavy music in one early scene, and some deeper, more naturally aggressive low end activity at a party sequence in chapter seven. Light ambient effects aren't so constant as to immerse the audience into various scenes, however. Most of the action is of the front-and-center variety, but it picks up nearly all of the important elements easily enough. Some gunplay later in the film lacks the aggressive punch and natural presence of the various weapons fired, but the basic sonic signatures prove satisfactory. Dialogue is usually even and plays back at the right levels, but it does come across as unnaturally quiet and a bit shallow in a jovial chapter two chit-chat sequence between several characters. Overall, this is a quality sound presentation from Echo Bridge.

American Son Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

American Son contains an audio commentary, a featurette, and two deleted scenes.

• Audio Commentary: Director Neil Abramson and Producers Danielle Renfrew and Michael Roiff shape a pretty typical commentary, discussing all of the basic filmmaking material. They cover the film's story and plot, its emotions, the score, differences from early ideas to the end product, shooting locations, some of the technical challenges of the location filming, cast and performances, and more.
• Behind the Scenes (HD, 11:38): Raw footage from the 20-day shoot.
• Deleted Scenes: Beach Talk (HD, 2:16) and Be Safe (HD, 1:16).

American Son Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

American Son never quite finds its full stride, failing to capture the very real, very deep, very heartbreaking emotions the story aims to engender in its audience. But it's not a total failure by any stretch of the imagination. It does capture some sound emotional content in both the sequence featuring the disabled veteran and in the sudden but deep and believable relationship formed between Mike and Cristina. Nevertheless, there's a vacuum in the film, a sense of absent dramatic supremacy. Audiences care about the characters, but not like they were family. Audiences are concerned for Mike's safety, his love life, and the lives of those closest to him, but not with any real, deeply held emotions that will linger long after the lights come up. It's a solid but incomplete movie, one with a strong working foundation that's of high enough quality to make it worth a watch. Echo Bridge's Blu-ray release of American Son features crisp, high end video and solid audio. A few supplements are included. Recommended.