6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.3 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.7 |
A thriller that follows two siblings who decide to fend for themselves in the wake of a botched casino heist, and their unlikely reunion during another family's Thanksgiving celebration.
Starring: Eric Bana, Olivia Wilde, Charlie Hunnam, Sissy Spacek, Kris KristoffersonThriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
For an initial reference point, think of a less funny, more serious Fargo. There might not be a wood-chipper here, but we do get a high-speed barbwire garroting, a lopped off pinky finger cauterized on a snowmobile's sizzling engine manifold, and all manner of humorless, wince-inducing violence. The noir-ish Deadfall takes place in Michigan's rural Upper Peninsula during a pre-Thanksgiving whiteout blizzard, and its tone is just as chilly as its setting. Writer Zach Dean and director Stefan Ruzowitzky—an Austrian whose 2007 drama The Counterfeiters won that year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film—tell a frostbitten tale of con-artists and familial dysfunction, anonymous motel sex and cold-blooded murder. It's a good old-fashioned thriller, and this is both its main strength and its key weakness. On one hand, barring some clumsy dialogue, the film is sharply made—tense, sexy, gorgeously shot—but on the other, it feel entirely conventional. It characters are familiar types. Its narrative turns come with the territory. It never really surprises or shocks. Deadfall is best approached, then, as a B-movie diversion; it's good for an hour and a half of entertainment, but it's not going to stick with you.
Deadfall lands on Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that seems true to source and intent. The movie was shot predominantly on 35mm—using a fast, fairly chunky film stock—with occasional digital footage from a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR. On the whole, the image is quite grainy and subsequently a little soft. That said, there's more than adequate fine high definition detail here where it counts, with closeups that reveal tight textures in, say, Olivia Wilde's knit cap, or the rugged, scruffy landscape of Charlie Hunnam's face. The film's color palette is appropriately chilly, with lots of blustery grays and muted blues, but daylight and interior scenes are typically more vivid. Saturation is good, but the contrast— and this is a subjective opinion—can sometimes be too skewed towards heavy black levels. (Though never oppressively so.) I didn't notice any real encode or compression issues, but the thickness of grain structure would make compression artifacts difficult to spot anyway. There's at least no sign of DNR, edge enhancement, or other unnecessary forms of filtering.
If there's one noise that characterizes Deadfall, it's cold wind gusting through the soundfield, carrying snow with a low howl. You'll hear this frequently in the film's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, which makes good use of the rear channels for trapped-in-a-blizzard immersion. You'll also hear roaring engines and directional gunshots, truck stop ambience and crackling fire. The mix is clear and forceful through, and dynamically varied, with throttling sub-woofer output when called for and tight highs. The opening car crash, particularly, is a one-two sonic suckerpunch. The uneasy score by Marco Beltrami (The Hurt Locker) ties it all together, and dialogue is consistently clean and easy to understand. The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.
Deadfall might not break any new ground for the thriller genre, but it is a small-scale story told well, an icy rural noir with family drama and snowmobile chases, cruel violence and a a sexy Olivia Wilde having sexy sex with Jax Teller...er, uh, Charlie Hunnam. (Hopefully, he'll get some different sorts of roles after the exposure of appearing in the upcoming Pacific Rim.) The casting of a Kris Kristofferson and Sissy Spacek as an old married couple was a nice touch, and Eric Bana makes for the sort of slick villain you simultaneously admire and loathe. Magnolia's Blu- ray release is solid on all sides, with a strong audio/video presentation and plenty of extras. If you've got money in your Blu-ray budget this month, sure, go for it, but if not, rent or stream it sometime; it's worth 90-odd minutes of your time.
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