Bloodrunners Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		2.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

Bloodrunners Blu-ray Movie Review

The Land of Vampire Mobsters

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson April 10, 2017

Dan Lantz's Bloodrunners attempts a genre hybrid, blending the Prohibition-era gangster picture with the vampire film. Ice-T headlines the cast as Chesterfield, owner of the eponymous jazz club and speakeasy as well as a notorious bootlegger during the dying days of Prohibition (ca. 1933) in Northampton, New Jersey. The movie opens inside the nightclub of Chesterfield's with Ice-T performing on trumpet along with his ensemble. The mood is festive and buoyant with cigarette girls serving the gentlemen guests and everyone enjoying the evening's entertainment. But there is a lot more happening behind this spectacle. Shady detective Jack Malone (Michael McFadden) and his partner Sam (Dan McGlaughlin) are casing out the place, charging Chesterfield and his mob associates with a "luxury tax" so the corrupt cops can garner a percentage of the liquor profits. Things seem a bit too ordinary and easy for Jack that he is unaware of what's transpiring behind the scenes. Chesterfield is actually a vampire with a furtive and lucrative bloodrunning enterprise that he's funneling through on his trucks. The story shifts to a pretty posh house (actually an elegant brothel) operated by Rosie (Kerry McGann) in the rural countryside. The dapper gangster Mr. Washington (Benjamin Kanes) arrives and literally takes a bite out of nubile Violet (Tammy Jean). A badly scarred prostitute shows up in the woods, which the raving preacher, Luther (Jack Hoffman), calls the act of beastly men. Jack realizes that this is a case more involved than a gang war. A frequenter of the brothel himself, Jack enlists the aid of Rosie to track down the vampire leader and his cronies, including the greasy Victor Renfield (Peter Patrikios). Jack also tries to get information out of Willie (Chris Boylan), a bus boy at the speakeasy whose also the boyfriend of Anna (Airen DeLaMater), Rosie's daughter.

There's more than just jazz going down at Chesterfield's club.

Bloodrunners is a stylish, glossy, and polished period film with solid production values. The colorful opening sequence that establishes a great atmosphere leads down a very different path that diverges from the filmmakers' best intentions, however. Ice-T is top-billed and promises to have one of the film's two biggest parts but his role is reduced to more of a glorified cameo. His screen time is relegated to mainly inside of the club and there's a missed opportunity to expand the arc of the Chesterfield character so he's the equal counterpart to Michael McFadden's Malone. There are also dubious choices as to the more modern wardrobes that the characters adorn, not to mention anachronisms in the props. Bloodrunners was shot using UltraHD cameras and while that may seem to be an acceptable decision to accent sharpness in the period settings and make the décor stand out, the intermixing of CGI with the live-action footage makes the movie look like an amped-up video game. The camerawork becomes too self-pretentious during the action scenes because it travels in ultra-slow motion to follow the trajectory of a bullet or the movement of the characters. Some of the other CGI created for blood and fire/embers appears too fake. While Bloodrunners is a gangland drama set during a specific historical period, the actors try too hard to recreate that era. Though it was probably the actors' noble intention to reproduce a certain authenticity in each role, their gesticulations make it look and sound as if their reciting scripted lines. The movie features several young actors who don't have a ton of experience working in front of the camera so their performances don't come across as natural as more seasoned thespians would have shown.

Bloodrunners Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bloodrunners arrives as a combo Blu-ray/DVD courtesy of Speakeasy Pictures. The movie is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on this AVC-encoded BD-25. Though the main feature carries a decent bitrate of 17089 kbps, the authoring and compression on this disc is rather poor. The most irritating issue is the prevalence of horizontal banding during light and dark scenes. (See Screenshot #s 6, 7, & 8). I also spotted MPEG macro-blocking artifacts and chroma noise in the darkly lit shots during nighttime scenes. Even the green and dandelion yellow hues outside of Rosie's brothel don't seem quite right to me. The transfer looks like a HD movie broadcast on satellite with low-level noise and other artifacts that pop up. The picture often looks sharp but for a very recent production, none of these anomalies should have been present to mar the image.

Speakeasy Pictures has broken the feature up into twenty-five chapter stops.

Please note that Blu-ray copies of Bloodrunners can be found on eBay, with regularly stocked BDs on Amazon.com to come at a later date. The movie is available on a variety of digital streaming platforms such as Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, iTunes, Vimeo, Vudu, and YouTube. Check out the film's official website at http://www.bloodrunnersmovie.com for more details.

Bloodrunners Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bloodrunners's sound track can be accessed via two lossy codecs: a Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps) option and a Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 kbps) downmix. I focused on the 5.1 track and while it serves the picture fine, it sound like a more conventional surround sound mix on a DVD. Tommy Gun shots provide much of the activity on the surrounds along with the CGI-layered action scenes. Dialogue is generally clear and intelligible as I didn't have to resort to the Subtitle button on my remote. There is a lack of consistency to the audio levels throughout the film, though. I tended to have the volume cranked up during the more intimate scenes between characters. There's no reason why Speakeasy could not have included an uncompressed recording.

The movie can be played with optional English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles.

Bloodrunners Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Official Trailer (1:58, 1080p)

• Gag Reel (4:45, 1080p) - a slew of bloopers and gaffes committed by the actors in unused takes. In English, not subtitled.

• Deleted Scenes (5:13, 1080p) - three scenes relegated to the cutting room floor, including an alternate opening. In English, not subtitled.

• Extended Scenes (3:02, 1080p) - two extended scenes that elongate footage present in the final cut. In English, not subtitled.

• Filmmaker Commentary - features director Dan Lantz and co-writer/star Michael McFadden. In English, not subtitled.

Bloodrunners Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Bloodrunners tries to do something new by molding together the mobster and vampire films but the end result is a mixed bag. Speakeasy Pictures delivers a problematic video transfer that leaves a lot of room for improvement. The audio options are barely adequate for Blu-ray but they're serviceable for this low-budget crime drama. There is a nice smattering of extras but they're short and don't contain any interviews. Hopefully, the physical disc will be available at Amazon soon. For the time being, I recommend a RENTAL of the digital copy.