Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Disconnect Blu-ray Movie Review

Reach out and touch somebody's hand.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 12, 2013

It’s getting harder and harder to remember a time when there wasn’t an internet, though some of us (ahem) are old enough to recall those halcyon days of handwritten (or typed) letters, phone calls via devices that were attached to a wall, and actual interpersonal relationships where you talked to people you were sitting next to. The sea change the internet has brought is truly amazing to those of us who spent at least part of our lives without being tethered to either a computer or a handheld mobile device. Some of those changes have been manifestly for the better. The sense of instant communication is awesome, and the fact that some of us can work from home for an internet based business is freeing beyond all measure (though it also means some of us “work” with people we’ve never actually met face to face). On the other hand, there’s also a sense of anonymity, whether warranted or not, that both shields people but which also depersonalizes and perhaps even demoralizes them. Disconnect offers a hodge podge of stories which ultimately more or less intersect but which all have to do with various uses of the internet and the dangers that use can bring. This first feature screenplay by Andrew Stern posits three sets of people whose lives intersect—if only tangentially—in a cascading series of events that finds all of them dealing with the aftereffects of hazards borne by the internet. While two of the stories have a visceral impact, at least for audience members who are parents and may have incipient fears about their children and dangers real or imagined, the third tale is somewhat less fully realized and also less compelling.

Disconnect introduces a glut of characters in its opening moments and then only relatively slowly divulges the links between them as the story progresses. Television reporter Nina Dunham (Andrea Riseborough) wants to break out of the fluff pieces she’s regularly been assigned, and is interested in pursuing a story about underage virtual “private dancers” who perform for paying customers online. She contacts Kyle (Max Theriot), a seemingly sweet young man who performs sex acts via a webcam, part of a business featuring a bunch of young kids of both genders housed together in a seedy old home. Rich Boyd (Jason Bateman) is the on staff attorney for the television station where Nina works, helping her and the station wend their way through a thickening plot once the FBI learns of Nina’s reportage and wants to shut the underage illicit activity down. Meanwhile Rich and his wife (Hope Davis) don't notice that their emotionally isolated son Ben (Jonah Bobo) is being virtually pranked by two boys, Jason Dixon (Colin Ford) and Frye (Aviad Bernstein), who have taken a page from Catfish and created a fake female identity with which they’re luring an unsuspecting Ben. Jason’s widower father Mike (Frank Grillo) is a former cop who now works as a private investigator helping hapless victims of identity theft figure out how their personal data got disseminated online. He’s hired by troubled young couple Cindy (Paula Patton) and Derek Hull (Alexander Skarsgard), a married duo who are reeling from the death of their infant son but who soon find themselves in desperate straits when their financial information is compromised and they find themselves with no viable credit cards or even a checking account.

As should be clear from even that brief précis, Disconnect is stuffed to the gills with characters and intersecting plot lines. While Stern and director Rubin do a fairly cogent job of keeping everything relatively clear, the film nonetheless has a (perhaps intentionally) diffuse quality, one that tends to drift, almost Slacker-like, from story to story, deliberately building to a rapid cutting climax where all three major tales come to violent (if not fatal) climaxes. Stern’s thesis is certainly valid, especially for those of a certain age who see a “brave new world” where everyone is married to a screen and when even an intimate “conversation” between two people is interrupted regularly for bouts of texting or surfing the web.

The most compelling story is probably undeniably that of young Ben, who is “seduced” by the fake online girl into “sexting” a photo of himself, leading to disastrous consequences. It’s a horrifying tale, but one that rings true, especially for parents who worry about teenagers’ sense of invincibility and lack of foresight into consequences. Ben’s desperation ultimately leads to a rather smart tethering of the stories of two fathers—Rich and Mike—in what is arguably the film’s strongest element. The reporter story seems more intentionally prurient than it needs to be (Theriot traipses around in virtually no clothes for several segments), and the troubled couple story, while at least somewhat compelling, seems ported over from some soap opera or made for television film, especially once the couple starts chasing the man (Michael Nyqvist) whom they believe has stolen their identities.

Director Henry-Alex Rubin, an Oscar nominee for his documentary Murderball, makes his (fictional) feature film debut with an emphasis on “jiggly cam” quasi-verité stylings that some may find appropriate to the subject matter, but which at times work against the dramatic momentum of the film. Rubin did have the challenge of finding a way to depict online interaction, and therefore spices up the proceedings with on screen texts that delineate what various characters are typing. Unfortunately, Rubin also seems to want to make a point of how separate everyone in this film is, and he repeatedly frames sequences from a distance or by placing interruptive elements in the foreground. Pedestrians or cars walk in front of the supposed major characters all the time, or a window or door or some other intermediary object is placed between the audience and the person we’re supposed to be caring about. Rubin is obviously playing a none too subtle game of “disconnect” himself, but that means there’s also often an emotional distance, a palpable and disruptive disconnect, between the viewer and the film.

Disconnect Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Disconnect is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Perhaps surprisingly for a digitally shot feature of such recent vintage, Disconnect rarely pops with the vivacity that some might expect of such an effort. Many sequences appear washed out, with a kind of milky overlay robbing the image of sufficient contrast, color saturation and fine detail. Some of the close-ups, however, are amazingly clear and brilliantly detailed (see the first screenshot for a great example). This is yet another contemporary film where the director and perhaps the DP have gone a bit overboard with color grading, and once again we're offered a bifurcated approach that tends to ping pong between cooler blue tones and warmer amber hues. While there's nothing truly objectionable or problematic here, this high definition presentation is surprisingly restrained and kind of blah looking.

Disconnect Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Disconnect's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is nuanced, if often quite subtle, utilizing surround activity mostly for Max Richter's minimalist score and for scenes like the crowded lunchroom sequence where Ben gets the supposed lewd "sext" from his fake girlfriend or a supposedly surreptitious meeting between Nina and Kyle which takes place outdoors. The film is really made up of smaller dialogue moments for the most part, and this track supports those faithfully, if without a lot of immersion. Fidelity is excellent, though there's not much dynamic range here.

Disconnect Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Henry-Alex Rubin. Note to first time directors who might also be doing their first audio commentary: we're already watching the film, we don't need a laundry list of what we're seeing.


• Making the Connections: Behind the Scenes of Disconnect (1080p; 27:18) is a rote but generally above average EPK-fest. The interviews actually have some cogent commentary on our internet obsessed world and what that has done to us as an interactive species.


• Recording Session of "On the Nature of Daylight" for Disconnect (1080p; 4:16) is an interesting peek behind the scenes of what a studio session looks like.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:31)

Disconnect Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Disconnect is certainly a worthy enterprise and one which has something important to say about the fractious nature of contemporary, internet based, life. The film is perhaps too scattershot for its own good, however, and some of Rubin's directorial choices become frustrating and even annoying after awhile. But the performances are uniformly excellent, especially Bateman, Grillo and a heartbreaking Bobo, who defies the film's tenor of emotional distance and is able to reach out and touch the audience, if only for a moment or two. This is a flawed film on several levels, but it's also a really interesting one. While this Blu-ray features a kind of lackluster video presentation, my personal assessment is that, warts and all, Disconnect is Recommended.