Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Close Range Blu-ray Movie Review

Don't Get Close

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 12, 2016

A good action picture needs an interesting plot and memorable characters. John McClane could not have become a household name if the first Die Hard had given short shrift to the marital problems that brought him to L.A., the elaborate heist of the Nakatomi corporation or the slickly evil mastermind, Hans Gruber. Steven Segal's Casey Ryback (Under Siege) would have been forgettable without the captain and crew of the USS Missouri, the machinations of the hijacker, Strannix, or the tactical intricacies of re-taking the ship. Jean-Claude Van Damme's Chance Boudreaux (Hard Target) and Max Walker (Timecop) stand out from JCVD's by-the-numbers filmography because of their memorable villains with their very specific schemes. The list could continue, but the point should be clear: Action pictures need a good story just as much as weaponry and fighting skills. Otherwise, they might as well be a stuntman's highlight reel.

And that is exactly what British martial artist Scott Adkins and director Isaac Florentine have created in Close Range, which had its premiere on Polish TV in September 2015, went straight to video in Sweden and got dumped into a few U.S. theaters in December. XLrator Media is now releasing the film on Blu-ray, which is strictly for devoted fans of the Adkins/Florentine style in such films as their two contributions to the Undisputed franchise (2: Last Man Standing and III: Redemption).

Close Range dispenses with such trivia as establishing character or setting up a situation. It opens with a text crawl about samurai and ronin, which is the last time anything Japanese appears in the film. Then we go straight to Adkins' character, unidentified, singlehandedly decimating the headquarters of a Mexican drug cartel. Who he is and why he's attacking the cartel are hastily filled in later.

An ex-commando named Colton MacReady, Adkins' action-figure hero has been summoned by his sister, Angela (Caitlin Keats), to rescue her daughter, Hailey (Madison Lawlor), who is MacReady's niece. Hailey was kidnapped by the cartel in connection with the business they are conducting with Hailey's stepfather, Walt Reynolds (Jake La Botz). MacCready would prefer to lay low, because he's a fugitive from criminal charges by the military (unjust charges, naturally), but he surfaces in response to his sister's plea for help.

That's the basic outline of a first act that Close Range omits, no doubt on the theory that such omission renders the film "lean and mean". What it really does is turn Close Range into a video game, which is how Florentine frequently shoots action sequences, with the camera taking the perspective of a player for whom the unbeatable MacReady is a game avatar. In a game, though, the player invests the action figure with his (or her) own emotions. Films work differently. MacCready's heroic rescue of his niece has no impact beyond the punches and kicks, because we don't yet know enough to be engaged in the action onscreen.

Naturally, the cartel's boss, Fernando Garcia (Tony Perez), insists on retribution, thereby setting up the film's remaining action sequences. He also wants to recover a flash drive that MacReady took accidentally, but the drive's contents don't even rise to the level of a MacGuffin, because MacReady doesn't care about them. One of the prices that Close Range pays for its emaciated narrative is that director Florentine has to stall before those sequences commence. Even at a trim 85 minutes, Close Range doesn't have enough plot to fill out the time it takes for Garcia and his men to travel across the border from Mexico; so Florentine has to resort to padding the running time with a sequence in which each of Garcia's eleven henchmen is identified by name in a freeze-frame, as if they were eleven distinctive individuals worthy of our attention. In fact, there's nothing memorable about any of them. When the time comes for MacReady to dispatch them, they're interchangeable.

One more villain is hastily introduced, a crooked sheriff named Calloway (Nick Chinlund), who is instructed by the cartel to check Angela's ranch house for her brother and hold him there until Garcia arrives. Calloway brings two deputies (Scott Evans and Randy Hall), who, unlike him, are honest cops and therefore might as well have signs on their foreheads that read "Cannon Fodder". The story follows a predictable path, as MacReady flees both the law and the cartel, only to double back, after fighting off his pursuers, to defeat Garcia's legions and save his family.

Adkins is a skilled athlete, and the fight choreography is professional and well-shot. So are various stunts involving vehicles and other staples of the action genre. But without sufficient setup, and especially given Adkins' limited range of expression, Close Range has to depend on Angela and Hailey to supply anything resembling emotion for the film's third act. Unfortunately, Caitlin Keats's performance as MacCready's sister is so wooden that it's even less realistic than the cartoonish violence, and Madison Lawlor's range of expression as Hailey is limited to flinching and looking uncomfortable. The only character who's even slightly memorable is Nick Chinlund's Sheriff Calloway, who says from the outset that he wants no more to do with Garcia's drug business. Calloway's attempts to separate himself from this dirty business is what passes for "drama" in Close Range.

Two writers are credited for the script, Shane Dax Taylor and Chad Law. It's hard to believe there was enough work to keep even one of them busy. More work was done by the animators who created the opening titles, transforming stills from the movie into comic book panels. They should have been hired to draw the whole film.

Close Range Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Specific information about the shooting format of Close Range was unavailable, but it appears to be a digital production. The cinematographer was Israeli DP Tal Lazar. Post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, from which XLrator's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced by a direct digital path.

The Blu-ray image has a video sheen that bespeaks its origin, and everything is exceptionally bright and overlit. This is appropriate enough for the U.S. scenes set mostly outdoors in the sunny Southwest, but in the opening in Mexico, where the palette favor beige, blue and black, the blacks shade toward gray. However, the latter to be a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers. Detail is generally superior; when Garcia and his men shoot up Angela's house, every squib has its impact minutely recorded, along with the debris it kicks up. If the actors' faces changed expression significantly (most can't manage it), those details too would appear on the Blu-ray. The most impressive images are the fight scenes, because Adkins doesn't need a stuntman, which means that the sequences aren't overedited. If you want to see Scott Adkins performing fantastic feats of martial artistry, the Close Range Blu-ray does its job.

Noise, distortion and other flaws were not evident. The film has been mastered on disc at an average bitrate of 28 Mbps, and the bits have been appropriately allocated to the kinetic fight sequences so that compression artifacts are avoided.

Close Range Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The usual suspects for action movie sound effects can be found on Close Range's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. Bullets fly, punches and kicks connect, and car engines roar. The mix is loud and generic. You've heard it all before. The dialogue, of which there's little of importance, is clear. The action score is by Stephen Edwards (Ninja ), a frequent collaborator with Adkins and Florentine.

Close Range Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra is a trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:31). At startup, the disc plays trailers for Wrecker, The Diabolical and Tokyo Tribe, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Close Range Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Unless you're desperate to see Scott Adkins dropkick a Mexican cartel into oblivion, skip Close Range.