Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Bad Company Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson April 22, 2018

Following the relative commercial success of his first American film Deceived (1991), British director Damian Harris was given free reign by Touchstone Pictures to choose his next project and he eventually settled upon a script titled The Tool Shed (later Bad Company) by the late mystery and crime novelist Ross Thomas. In his audio commentary, Harris mentions that Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted to cram a lot of productions into Touchstone's release slate, a risky move that did not pay off in the least for Bad Company. Touchstone dumped it into theaters in January 1995 and it had neither the critical cache nor positive WOM to sustain it. Critics gave it subpar to poor reviews and it played in no more than 302 theaters across the US. The film boasts a wonderful cast but is undermined by Thomas's convoluted plot.

Nelson Crowe (Laurence Fishburne) is a CIA operative besmirched by the agency after he allegedly swindled some gold used to bribe an Iraqi colonel. Although he was unwillingly pulled into this scheme, Nelson is still valued by CIA associates for his high IQ (over 140!). Nelson works in Seattle at The Grimes Organization, an industrial espionage corporation headed by former CIA director Vic Grimes (Frank Langella). Grimes and his sometime girlfriend/No. 2 in command Margaret Wells (Ellen Barkin) are dirty tricksters who deal in blackmail, bribery, kidnapping, and murder plots. Grimes hires Nelson for $80,000 to do odd spy jobs. One major case the Tool Shed or Tool Box (as Grimes' outfit is called) involves Curl Industries and its head honcho Walter Curl (Spalding Gray), whose in hot water because his firm unloaded a toxic waste dump that disabled several children. Grimes and Curl appoint Nelson as a fixer. He must try to bribe Judge Beach (David Ogden Stiers), a Supreme Court justice, to rule in favor of Curl Industries and the $25 million lawsuit brought against it. Beach loves to gamble but his problem is that he's sinking further in debt. He's also having an affair with the beautiful Julie Ames (Gia Carides) who can't resist using Beach's money to buy expensive clothes. The bribe is a tantalizing offer but will Beach accept it and compromise his ethics?

There are also complex sexual politics with Margaret as she's entangled with both Vic and Nelson. She is as cunning and conniving as she is sultry and seductive. She arranges an amorous weekend getaway with Vic at his upscale summer cottage where the couple enjoy the great outdoors and smoldering love-making inside. But Margaret and Nelson are secretly in cahoots and scheming about how they can overtake Grimes to run the outfit themselves. Nelson spends a day in the wilderness watching them with his binoculars and also peering in on them together in bed. Does the normally reserved Nelson have the killer instinct to get rid of Grimes? There are other power players involved that Harris and Thomas intertwine in this highly complicated plot.

Margaret and Nelson stealthily enjoy a romantic tryst.

It takes at least two full viewings of Bad Company to distill the characters' motives and thread together the myriad strands in Thomas's spy maze. It takes a while to get into the story which is a slow-burn for the first half. Fishburne and Barkin are the primary reasons to see the picture. Sir Laurence plays a cool and calculated spy whose difficult to read and this opaqueness keeps the audience guessing. Barkin is as sexy as she is in Sea of Love (1991) and possibly in The Big Easy (1987) as well. Harris describes Bad Company as Dangerous Liaisons crossed with elegant film noir; one sees this in the über-contemporary production design by Andrew McAlpine and scintillating cinematography by Jack N. Green. If you lose track of the plot, Bad Company still has plenty of shiny aesthetics and good performances to make the experience worthwhile.

Bad Company Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kino Lorber brings Bad Company to Blu-ray on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25. The 1995 movie appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of about 2.39:1. I was hoping that Kino would re-master and devote at least some restoration work on the archival print but this transfer looks like a facsimile of what appeared on the 2003 Touchstone DVD. There are numerous film artifacts scattered throughout the presentation that confirms Kino struck it from a dated master. I may even call this an upconversion of the SD disc but the picture is sharper and boasts gaudier colors with clear delineation. It's a mostly dark movie. Contrast and background detail is below average (see Screenshot #8, for instance). This is also the case in the close-up of Nelson in capture #4, although the pores on his face are still visible and well-rendered. In addition, there may be some edge enhancement and artificial sharpening. In short, the transfer for Bad Company looks more akin to video than it does film. The main feature sports an average video bitrate of 22052 kbps.

Kino has provided a mere eight chapter breaks.

Bad Company Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kino has only supplied a Dolby Stereo Surround mix which is presented here as a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (1559 kbps, 16-bit). Dialogue is generally audible and clear although I sometimes had to have my volume up to make out all the spoken words. Carter Burwell's score has a moderate presence along the front speakers. There is occasional separation and discreteness for f/x. Touchstone did a 5.1 mix for the studio's DVD and I wish that Kino would have licensed that track and converted it into lossless on this disc.

Optional English SDH are available to switch on/off in the menu and through remote control.

Bad Company Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Director Damian Harris - a pretty informative track by Harris that seems to have a few more gaps than his commentary for Deceived In English, not subtitled.

• Animated Stills & Behind-the-Scenes Image Gallery (3:36, 1080p) - a slide show which is accompanied by a couple cues from Carter Burwell's score. Divided into two sections, the first presents twenty-nine high-res images from Touchstone Picture's ad campaign, including on-set production photographs and lobby cards. The second, titled "Behind the Scenes," displays a dozen color pictures of director Damian Harris working with his crew and interacting with the actors.

• Original Theatrical Trailer (2:08, 480i) - a full-frame (1.33:1), video-sourced trailer for Bad Company. In English, not subtitled.

• Bonus Previews - trailers for five other Kino Lorber catalog titles.

Bad Company Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Bad Company is one of the forgotten and neglected "designer noirs" of the nineties. Despite pacing issues and too many subplots, the film is attractively photographed and smartly acted by Fishburne and Barkin. It's too bad that Kino Lorber did not perform a new 2K scan of the 35mm print and clean up the old blips. The uncompressed 2.0 stereo is adequate but I'll hold on to my Touchstone DVD for the 5.1 Surround. Kudos to Kino, though, for having Damian Harris record another commentary and also including a very nice photo gallery. Substantively, Bad Company eclipses Harris's thriller Deceived but the latter is more enjoyable in its plot twists. Fishburne is one of my favorite actors and the disc is worth adding to fans' BD collections. I am giving the Blu-ray a SLIGHT RECOMMENDATION in spite of the mediocre video and audio.