Cosmic Sin Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Cosmic Sin Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 27, 2021

Through much of cinema’s history promotional artwork has been used to hook an audience, sometimes really nailing the tone and tenor of a movie and sometimes seeming to promise something that’s not really there or amplifying a character or quality that's barely in the film. Cosmic Sin’s artwork doesn’t lie – the film does indeed star Bruce Willis who spends much of his screen time inside a mechanized suit looking like something out of Elisiym or Edge of Tomorrow. Die Hard of the future, anyone? The world needs more gritty, futuristic Sci-Fi. And the plot doesn’t sound half bad, either. The blurb on Blu-ray.com promises "a group of warriors and scientists fight[ing] to save society from a hostile alien invasion." Neat! By the looks of it Cosmic Sin should be fantastic. But never judge a book by its cover and never judge a movie by its poster and tagline. Rather than a film blending sophisticated action and intelligent plotting, like the aforementioned futuristic Sci-Fi Action films, Cosmic Sin is a modestly budgeted stinker with a fully incoherent story told on a small scale and lousy acting to boot. Curse you, marketing!

The film provides a brief history of the world, circa now and for the next 500 years, in an effort to explain what the rest of the movie makes largely unexplainable. But in essence in the year 2031 man has colonized Mars and new technologies allow for the colonization of distant worlds. Two and a half centuries later, the Mars colony fails and "The Alliance" now rules over Earth, Zafdie, and Ellora. In 2519, Zafdie attempts to secede from The Alliance but the so-called “Blood General,” James Ford (Bruce Willis), drops a powerful bomb on the rebels the squelches the rebellion. The year is now 2524. A woman on a planet, only one of two people on the world, shares a report of a first contact with an alien species when her co-worker-slash-lover disappears into the night. This sets into motion some race against time or something or another involving General Ford being pulled out of retirement, arming another weapon of mass destruction, and joining a team of soldiers who land on a planet and start shooting at stuff.

The film is not only hard to follow because it's disjointed and poorly written (and acted, for that matter) but because it's just so boring. Yeesh! The film makes the mistake of building an extensive, nearly exhaustive history of complex interconnected and intergalactic social, political, and industrial stories spanning half a millennia and expects the audience to catch up in less than 90 seconds and keep up in less than 90 minutes, all the while the story is burdened by bad writing and substandard technical execution. Granted there are some decently choreographed future action scenes and sequences, both in space and on the ground on one of the planets (it was either Zadfie or Ellora and I'm frankly not interested in skipping through the movie again to find out which one) that, in isolation, play pretty well. The rest of the movie is just so bogged down in genuinely uninteresting tripe that by the time the action comes there's zero investment in the audience's part to care why it's playing out, or where, or who might be die, never mind what the ultimate outcome may be. This movie is just a mess. A messy messy mess.

The film takes place 500 years in the future yet…so many of the guns are exactly the same as can be bought today (Beretta PX4s mostly because they have some “futuristic” lines), the cars are the same (characters drive pickup trucks and in the background one can see free flowing traffic that looks straight out of…2020), the skyline is the same except for a few more lights and signs, but, hey, bartenders are now robots with holographic pixel smiley faces. So there’s that. There’s also the intergalactic travel, the other guns which at least pretend to be “futuristic,” the armor, and so on. The point is that none of this can be taken seriously. And should anyone take it seriously? Bruce Willis doesn’t. If this isn’t the worst performance of his career then it would be a surprise. He’s genuinely bad, lazy, and unmotivated, probably because he doesn’t actually have a clue as to what’s going on, just like everyone else. This is just a bad movie.

Cosmic Sin Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The movie at least looks pretty good. Paramount's 1080p Blu-ray presentation may not break any new ground for the format, and the picture is limited by the obvious budgetary constraints for both the photography and the post-production spruce-up, but viewers should expect a very presentable and respectable image. It's clean, clear, nicely detailed. Noise is not particularly bothersome save for some of the more challenging low-light interiors. Essential facial features are crisp, the futuristic armor will show most of the tech and the wear it's sustained through the years with good-enough definition, and environments are appropriately clear and clean, particularly down on that woodland planet area. Color output is fine. It's suitably bold, yielding vivid primaries, bright whites, and deep blacks. The image is free of any major source shortcomings and encode anomalies. For anyone actually watching, at least the accompanying picture quality is not an insult to the eyes.

Cosmic Sin Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Cosmic Sin's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is well capable of delivering the film's sonic needs, which are surprisingly not constrained. The track is open and demonstrates some well functioning width and surround integration. Action scenes obviously take center stage for the amount of movement and depth. Gunplay is invigorating as are some of the space battle scenes. There's plenty of stuff going on through all of the channels to carry any action scene to audible satisfaction, anyway, and there's a decent low end support. The subwoofer never growls or is at all pushed to anything remotely near its limits, but the modest support to action and music alike is welcome. Music flows well across the front, playing with good fundamental clarity and slight surround extension. Atmospherics are likewise well integrated all over the stage. Dialogue is clear and refined from a natural front-center position.

Cosmic Sin Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Cosmic Sin contains no supplemental content. The main menu screen only offers options to "Play" the film, toggle "Subtitles" on and off, and select "Scenes." No DVD copy of the film is included with purchase, and neither is a slipcover. This release does include a digital copy voucher.

Cosmic Sin Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If movies were good or bad based on the promise before one sits down in the theater or plops the disc in the player (or, today, clicks the button on Netflix), then at least for the Sci-Fi junkie Cosmic Sin would be a heavenly delight. But the movie is lousy at its best and unwatchable (and incoherent) at worst. It's a poor film with a good idea that's implausibly fumbled from the beginning. Someone please remake this. There's something good lurking well below the superficial mess. Paramount's featureless Blu-ray does deliver solid video and audio. Skip it.