Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Criminal Activities Blu-ray Movie Review

Whose Story Is It?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 20, 2016

According to both IMDb and numerous reviews, the script for Criminal Activities was written by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Lowell—and if that were true, it would be major news in the world of literature. Lowell was noted for his erudition, his confessional verse and his tempestuous personal life, but no one has ever associated him with the movies. If Lowell really did have a secret life in which he scripted a film that has been compared (usually unfavorably) to Pulp Fiction, entire chapters of American literary history will have to be rewritten, not to mention several biographies.

Then again, how could any writer, even one as talented as Lowell, have had the foresight to write a Tarantino-esque screenplay years before the future auteur ever took the fateful job in a video store where he began learning his craft? When Lowell died in 1977, there weren't any video stores; there wasn't even home video; and the future creator of Reservoir Dogs and The Hateful Eight was an unknown fourteen-year-old living in Torrance, California. On chronology alone, the notion of Lowell's writing Criminal Activities doesn't withstand scrutiny. (The same can be said of the film's plot.)

One might shrug off the mysterious authorship of Criminal Activities, except that both its director and its star keep stressing in interviews that they were attracted to the project by the terrific script. One can't help but wonder what talented author lured John Travolta into anchoring a non-studio picture and actor Jackie Earle Haley into making his directorial debut. (According to Haley, he was introduced to Criminal Activities by his manager's husband, producer Wayne Allen Rice; maybe Rice knows the script's provenance.) Haley, the former child star whose career was revived by an Oscar nomination for Little Children and has since appeared in such films as Watchmen, Shutter Island, the remake of Robocop and Lincoln, has assembled a talented cast who keep you watching even as you're shaking your head in disbelief. He also gives the film a bizarrely off-kilter visual style that is presumably meant to complement (or maybe distract from) the material's fundamental implausibility. Whether viewers will end up feeling satisfied, cheated or just plain tired by the time the story has worked through its numerous twists is a separate question.

RLJ/Image Entertainment acquired Criminal Activities at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. After a brief theatrical run in November, the company is now issuing the film on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD.

Criminal Activities centers on four former high school acquaintances who are reunited at the funeral of another former student killed in a traffic accident. (The deceased, Matthew, is played by the director's son, Chris Haley.) Zach (Michael Pitt) is an investment manager who delivers the predictable platitudes about life's fragile uncertainty, though Zach himself seems to be doing just fine. Besides his financial success, he has a gorgeous fiancée (Morgan Wolk) with whom he enjoys a backseat quickie in her Range Rover before joining the group for a memorial drink. Warren (Christopher Abbot, formerly of Girls), a newly reformed alcoholic, and Bryce (Rob Brown, Finding Forrester) aren't doing as well. The fourth member of the group, Noah (Dan Stevens, The Guest), is a real estate broker and also something of a party-crasher. Formerly the nerdy hanger-on whom the other three could barely tolerate as a teenager, Noah is allowed to join the group in mourning, because they can't really say no. Old patterns of behavior quickly resurface, including Noah's efforts to ingratiate himself by producing a joint for everyone to share.

Somehow, "the Four Amigos", as Noah calls them, emerge from this encounter united in a shady but apparently harmless business transaction that is supposed to make them all rich (or in the case of Noah, whose late father was wealthy, even richer). No one actually says the words "insider trading", but everyone knows they're cutting corners. A month later, though, the group is startled to discover that their machinations have landed them in debt to a mob boss named Ed Lovato. "Ed", as he insists on being called, is played by Travolta with a combination of the cool self-possession shown by his more famous loan shark character, Chili Palmer in Get Shorty, and a delight in irrelevant soliloquies that recalls Gabriel Shear in Swordfish. To clear their debt, Ed requires the foursome to undertake a risky kidnapping, though why he would entrust such an enterprise to these bumblers is an open question, especially when Ed already has the services of two experienced enforcers, Gerry (Haley) and Little Mike (Christopher Jay Gresham). In fact, Zach asks Ed that very question, to which Ed replies that his regular guys have other work to do.

Travolta's Ed has competition in the monologue department. Two other characters, Gerry and the kidnap victim, Marques (Edi Cathegi, a recurring player on The Blacklist), also make regular use of the kind of insinuating digression that has become a staple on film and TV ever since Samuel L. Jackson recited Ezekiel 25:17 for Tarantino. Indeed, Criminal Activities' greatest debt to Pulp Fiction isn't so much the shady milieu or the twisty plot, but the way it uses dialogue as misdirection, whether in rapid-fire exchanges or in lengthy confrontations, to maneuver both the characters and the audience from one improbable development to another. Pulp Fiction's improbabilities ultimately coalesced into a kind of cosmic overview of destiny's quirks, as its characters randomly crossed each other's paths, sometimes colliding, sometimes narrowly missing each other, and always heading toward an unpredictable future. Criminal Activities, by contrast, is the kind of film where you know that somebody somewhere has a master plan and that most of what you're seeing isn't the real story, but you can only guess at what's underneath, because essential information has been deliberately withheld. "All is not what it seems", says Travolta's Ed at one point, and in one sense he's right. In the end, though, Criminal Activities turns out to be exactly what it seems, which is a sustained prank on the audience. The actors obviously had fun, but the viewer? Not so much.

Criminal Activities Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Criminal Activities was shot on Alexa by Seamus Tierney (Happythankyoumoreplease), who gives the contrived proceedings a rich, handsome surface. RLJ/Image's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, presumably sourced from digital files, offers a detailed image with a frequently saturated palette that complements the film's increasingly unlikely events. Black levels, contrast and densities are all good, and there is no apparent noise, interference or artifacting. RLJ/Image has mastered the 94-minute film on a BD-25 with an average bitrate of 23.98 Mbps, and the compression has been capably performed.

Criminal Activities Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Criminal Activities's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, is more about manipulation than the reproduction of environments. Indeed, the film's musical score by Keefus Ciancia (As Above, So Below) often substitutes for naturalistic sound, using electronic beats and tones to convey a mood. The score has been effectively distributed through the surround array, so that it often seems to float above the action, like an unidentified observer (or maybe someone pulling the strings). The film's dialogue is well-mixed and properly reproduced and, aside from the score, it's the soundtrack's main focus.

Criminal Activities Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with John Travolta and Jackie Earle Haley (1080p; 1.78:1; 8:32): Although this interview is clearly promotional, it's interesting to hear Travolta talk about directors he's worked with.



• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:09): These two brief scenes were probably cut for pacing.



• Introductory Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for Pay the Ghost, Return to Sender and Bone Tomahawk, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Criminal Activities Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's beyond ironic that the script of Criminal Activities has been attributed to Robert Lowell, whose erudite existence as a writer and teacher at such rarefied institutions as Harvard and Yale couldn't be further removed from the film's illicit environs. Lowell wouldn't have sat through this film, let alone written it. Whether you want to sit through it is a personal decision, but I recommend doing so with a rental.