Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Buster's Mal Heart Blu-ray Movie Review

Swiss Army Darko.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 6, 2017

Rami Malek has perfect eyes for paranoia. Malek has the same slightly fish eyed appearance that made Marty Feldman (who suffered from Graves’ ophthalmopathy, a thyroid related condition) so distinctive looking. The fact that Malek can sometimes seem to be looking in two places at once perhaps provides an almost subliminal element that he’s keeping track of things that aren’t right in front of him, an aspect that has played brilliantly into his acclaimed work on a television series absolutely suffused with paranoiac sensibilities, Mr. Robot. There’s also paranoia in ample quantities wafting through the strangely surreal Buster’s Mal Heart, a film whose very title may hint at its “artier” tendencies. Buster’s Mal Heart may ultimately not make a whale of a lot of sense (whale being the operative term, as detailed below), but it has a palpable mood, and Malek is outstanding as a character (or perhaps characters — more about that in a moment) who may or may not be experiencing some kind of mental breakdown. Buster’s Mal Heart is intentionally elliptical, to the point that some less patient viewers may choose to give up on its deliberately opaque narrative structure, but the film is decidedly sui generis and may appeal to those who like similar “one offs” such as Swiss Army Man. At least somewhat in line with some elements from that film, Buster’s Mal Heart seems to be depicting the mental deterioration of a loner, in this case the titular Buster (Rami Malek), who is initially seen in what might be considered a “Ted Kaczynski” frame of mind, holed up in a cave, unkempt and seemingly unhinged. However, in the often diaphonous presentational style of writer and director Sarah Adina Smith, this may all be an illusion—or not.

There’s actually a kind of distinct Swiss Army Man vibe running through at least parts of Buster’s Mal Heart, what with Buster holed up in a cave and frequent interstitials featuring him lost at sea. But Smith, whether intentionally or not, references a number of other properties, in tone if not in actual content. The whole film aims for the kind of darkly metaphysical aspect that helped define Donnie Darko, though Smith’s narrative may not hold up to even the sometimes tenuously cohesive levels of the Richard Kelly opus. There’s a whole aspect dealing with Buster’s former (or, alternatively, parallel) life as Jonah, a concierge working the Night Shift at a dilapidated lodging facility which looks like the American suburban remnants of The Grand Budapest Hotel . A scene in the hotel where Jonah is accosted by a conspiracy theorist named Brown (DJ Qualls) is staged precariously close to another famous showdown in a hotel bar found in The Shining.

And in fact the whole conspiracy angle, one which revolves around a so-called “inversion” hinging on the changeover from the 20th to the 21st century (remember that fear-a-thon?) evokes all sorts of similarly themed horror enterprises, though it’s handled here in such a weirdly dissociative way that even the shocking revelation of what the inversion means personally for Buster (or is that Jonah?) is perhaps at least somewhat enervated. The film ping pongs back and forth between a number of elements, characters (if one accepts Buster and Jonah as separate characters) and timeframes, and the result is deliberately disjunctive and therefore perhaps unavoidably disturbing feeling. After a very brief shot of two characters in a boat in the middle of the ocean, we first see Buster running from hordes of approaching lawmen, and there’s a furious gun battle. But then the film segues to “10 days earlier” when an even more unkempt and scraggly haired Buster has achieved a weird kind of fame for repeatedly breaking into shuttered vacation cabins, while at the same time calling into various conspiracy minded radio programs to rant. Seemingly further back in time is a more normal lifestyle for Buster, when (as Jonah) he works the night shift at a hotel while longing for more time with his wife and adorable daughter. Vignettes are presented in all of these settings (including the boat), but there’s little to seemingly link them, other than the subtextual implication that the tragedy of the inversion may have transformed Jonah into Buster. (The name Jonah is utilized for some supposedly "meaningful" banter about being in the belly of the whale at various times.)

It’s perhaps notable that despite the horrifying event at the center of the film (in more ways than one), perhaps the most disturbing sequence sees Buster taking over a cabin where an elderly couple ends up being held hostage. The old man is obviously suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and thinks Buster is the couple’s deceased son, while the helpless wife is trying to deal both with being a hostage and helping her addled husband to understand what’s really going on. There’s a palpable sense of dread running through this scene, and indeed much of the film, but things may simply be too opaque to ever build to a satisfying catharsis. Smith plays her cards pretty close to her vest, even as she seems to be doling out clues to what’s actually going on (when Buster phones into a television psychic, the psychic tells him that he’s actually lost on a boat in the middle of the ocean and has been for some time, but even this “explanation” may be a hallucination or deliberately misleading).

I am not too proud to admit that my first time through Donnie Darko, I was mightily confused, but I was also mightily intrigued, since there seemed to be at least a glimmer of sense lurking beneath the often bizarre storyline and visuals. I didn’t have quite the same confidence on my first time through Buster’s Mal Heart, but I have to say this is one of those films seemingly designed to provoke questions in the audience, and many, like me, will probably return to it more than once if only to see if perhaps there are a few hidden answers lingering there.

Buster's Mal Heart Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Buster's Mal Heart is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. While once again the IMDb comes up empty on technical data on the film, some online sources credit the Red Dragon as the camera of choice, including at least one site that quotes director Sarah Adina Smith. There's an appealing crispness to the visuals here, despite a somewhat drab palette in both the hotel environment and even some of the outdoor "Buster" material. As can be seen in several of the screenshots accompanying this review, quite a few of the outdoor scenes are graded toward icy blue and gray tones, though detail levels remain largely intact. A number of extreme close-ups offer excellent fine detail levels, to the point that individual bristles on Buster's scraggly beard are easily identifiable. Some of the dimly lit "night shift" scenes in the hotel are a bit murky looking, something perhaps exacerbated by a kind of dowdy brown-yellow tint accompanying many of them. A couple of key scenes look green screened, and there's that typical softness to backgrounds in such moments. There are also some intentional quasi-psychedelic elements that intrude where the imagery is deliberately skewed and/or tweaked.

Buster's Mal Heart Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Buster's Mal Heart's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 provides good, if intermittent, immersion, offering suitably punchy sonic energy when things like gunfire erupt, but also providing a good, realistic accounting of the environments through which Buster and/or Jonah pass. There are a couple of near hallucinatory sequences where the sound design gets a bit "trippy", and surround activity in these moments is deliberately odd sounding. Dialogue is routinely clean and clear, with no prioritization issues whatsoever.

Buster's Mal Heart Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes

  The Conductor (1080p; 1:18)

  Roxy's Frog (1080p; 1:12)

  Break Time (1080p; 00:43)

  Throw a Line (1080p; 2:19)

  Grilled Cheese [1] (1080p; 00:48)

  Grilled Cheese [2] (1080p; 00:55)

  I Am Who I Am (1080p; 2:29)

• Teaser (1080p; 1:23)


• Trailer (1080p; 2:15)

Note: As with most Well Go USA releases, the supplements have been authored to follow each other automatically. After these supplements play, the disc has been authored to move on to previews for other Well Go USA releases (the previews also load automatically, and actually quite slowly, at disc boot up as well).

Buster's Mal Heart Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm frankly not quite sure what to think of Buster's Mal Heart, but the fact that the film does make me think I personally take as a good sign, and a potent indicator that I'll be revisiting this film again, if only to see what (if anything) I missed the first time through. This is an odd item in any case, and probably those with more adventurous spirits and/or Art House sensibilities will be more attuned to its peculiar style and storytelling artifices. Technical merits are strong, and with caveats noted, Buster's Mal Heart comes Recommended.