Cuban Fury Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Cuban Fury Blu-ray Movie Review

The Full Desi

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 28, 2014

Nick Frost is best known as Simon Pegg's rotund sidekick in Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Paul, The World's End and, for Brit TV addicts, their early collaboration, Spaced. In Cuban Fury, Frost takes the lead—literally—in a vehicle of his own conception. It seems that Frost always wanted to star in a dance movie. The fact that he didn't know how to dance didn't deter him. That's what seven months of training was for.

If an American studio were to display a poster with Frost's plump figure striking a sexy pose adorned in sequins, you might expect the typical genre parody that, ever since Airplane!, has become the easiest type of laugh-free comedy to crank out on schedule. (The dearth of creative invention is reflected in titles like 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.) But Frost, Pegg and their production company, Big Talk, take more pride in their work. Shaun of the Dead riffed on every cliche of the zombie film, but it also delivered a satisfying slice of zombie mayhem, just as Hot Fuzz parodied buddy cop movies while providing its version of the genre, complete with explosive action sequences. Cuban Fury follows the same template. It's a genuine dance movie with great music and memorable scenes of dancers strutting their stuff. It just happens to have an unlikely leading man whose underdog status is exploited for laughs, in the classic self-deprecating style of British humor that any fan of Spaced will recognize.

Frost plays Bruce Garrett, a thirty-something product designer at an international lathe manufacturer. Single, plodding and morose, Bruce leads a life of quiet resignation, punctuated by occasional calls and visits with his eccentric sister, Sam (Olivia Colman, I Give It a Year), a bartender in a Polynesian theme restaurant, and by weekend golf outings with two old friends, Gary (Rory Kinnear, Skyfall) and Mickey (Tim Plester), whose lives are just as dull as Bruce's.

But Bruce wasn't always like this. As a teenager (played by Ben Radcliffe), Bruce was a dance prodigy, whose heart—or corazón, in the preferred term of his teacher, Ron Parfitt, played by the incomparable Ian McShane (Deadwood )—blazed with a passion for salsa. With young sister Sam (Isabella Steinbarth) as his partner, and steered by Ron's masterful hand, Bruce cut rugs and won trophies across Britain, until it all ended on the night of the National Championships, when Bruce's spirit was broken by three bullies who beat him up on his way to the contest. He renounced dancing, retreated into himself and dissolved into the faceless crowd of working stiffs.

Bruce's dancing feet begin twitching again when he discovers that the beautiful new head of his division, Julia Matthews (Rashida Jones, Parks and Recreation ), is a passionate salsa fan, taking classes and visiting clubs in her off-hours. Bruce is sure that he's still "got it", but he's failed to take into account the effect of more than two decades of sedentary life, plus all those extra pounds. Tracking down an embittered Ron Parfitt at his current dance school, Bruce is humiliated when he attempts to dance with a limber salsa demon named Alicia (Yanet Fuentes). He picks himself up and realizes he has to start again from square one. But he doesn't have much time, because the office lothario, Drew (Chris O'Dowd), has set his sights on Julia, and although Drew is a crude, tasteless buffoon, he has one big advantage over Bruce, which is that he's bold enough to ask, which is why, as Drew says, "Women like [Julia] use guys like you to get advice about men like me."

Cuban Fury provides the expected elements of a comeback story (in the Q&A included with the extras, Frost cites Rocky III), including the requisite training montage and a grand finale with last-minute surprises, but most of the comedy comes from the segments in between, and here Frost serves a function just as unfamiliar for him as that a of a dancer. When he appears opposite Simon Pegg, Frost usually plays a dim goofball, but here he's the sensible one who serves as straight man to characters with an excess of personality like Sam, Ron, Drew and the new best friend Bruce acquires at salsa class, a Persian of indeterminate sexuality named Bejan (Kayvan Novak), whose speech is a blend of accent and affectation. (Novak's delivery kept reminding me of Bronson Pinchot's Serge in the Beverly Hills Cop films, which isn't a bad thing.) Even Bruce's sad-sack golf buddies, Gary and Mickey, are caricatures of Bruce's own acceptance of his lot, beginning each get-together with a ritual inventory of their lack of contact with the opposite sex (despite Gary's being married).

That Bruce and Julia are made for each other should be obvious not only from their shared love of salsa, but also from the fact that they're the only two characters in evidence who behave even remotely like normal people. Admittedly, the sight of Nick Frost surrounded by lithe salsa dancers bending and undulating in skillfully choreographed routines is ridiculous on its face, but then Frost starts moving with them, and he turns out to be remarkably graceful. Those seven months of training weren't wasted. He obviously put his corazón into it.

Cuban Fury Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cuban Fury was shot by Dick Pope, a frequent collaborator with director Mike Leigh and the architect of the stylized cinematography for Dark City and The Illusionist. According to IMDb, the film was shot with an Arri Alexa, but regardless of the capture format, the film was finished on a digital intermediate, a process that has so minimized any visible distinction between film and video that, for new productions, the original format hardly matters. The image on Entertainment One's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is crisply defined, with sharp focus and plenty of fine detail, excellent blacks and a brightly saturated color palette in the major dancing sequences that contrasts sharply with the cool blues, whites and grays of Bruce's office (but note that Julia's outfits usually contain a touch of red expressing her secret passion for dance). The initial flashback to Bruce's youth has been given a slightly overexposed, high-contrast look to mark it as an earlier era (and also, I suspect, to help take some years off Ian McShane's expressively wrinkled countenance).

Kudos to Entertainment One for giving this film the breathing room of a BD-50, thereby achieving an average bitrate of 30.00 Mbps (which is the actual reading) and allowing all of the complex dancing scenes to play without any artifacts.

Cuban Fury Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Cuban Fury's 5.1 soundtrack arrives on Blu-ray in a choice of formats, either lossless DTS-HD MA or lossy DD 5.1 at 640 kbps. Why anyone would choose any track other than lossless is beyond me, except for those whose equipment cannot decode it. The enhanced fidelity and multi-channel format do wonders for the lively salsa soundtrack, which is split between original scoring by Daniel Pemberton (The Counselor) and classics written and/or performed by the likes of Tito Puente, Willie Colon, Perez Prado and many others. Depending on one's familiarity with various types of English accents, the rapidly spoken dialogue may or may not be a challenge, but the optional subtitles are always available for help. Bijan's uncategorizable accent is frequently tricky to decipher, but Kayvan Novak's delivery usually provides enough clues.

Cuban Fury Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

A "play" all function is included for the extras in their entirety.

• Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes (1080p; 1.78:1): A separate "play all" function is included here. Taken together, these four featurettes, featuring the principal cast, director James Griffiths and several of the producers, provide an decent overview of the production.
• The Film (2:43)
• The Cast (3:07
• The World of Salsa (2:39)
• Nick and Rashida (2:05)



• How to Dance Salsa with Nick Frost #1 (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:44): This and the following two featurettes chronicle Frost's training for the film.



• How to Dance Salsa with Nick Frost #2 (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:52).



• How to Dance Salsa with Nick Frost #3 (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:43).



• Q&A with Nick Frost (1080p; 1.78:1; 8:53): Taken from "The B-Movies Podcast" recorded after a screening at The Arclight Theater in Hollywood, this interview gives Frost an opportunity to talk about the film's origin and development.



• Guide to Office Etiquette (1080p; 1.78 & 2.40:1; 0:42): A short promotional spot.



• How to Salsa with Ron Parfitt (1080p; 1.78 & 2.40:1; 1:23 ): A second promotional spot.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.40:1; 2:39): In addition to the film's trailer, the disc also plays the trailer for Knights of Badassdom at startup, which is not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Cuban Fury Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cuban Fury played more widely in the U.K. than here and was a bigger success in its native land, probably because so much of its humor is distinctively British, even if the genre that inspired it is strictly a Hollywood product. Take that into account in deciding whether the film is (so to speak) your cup of tea. The Blu-ray itself is a satisfying experience and highly recommended.