Disorganized Crime Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Disorganized Crime Blu-ray Movie Review

When the title perfectly describes the movie, in a bad way...

Reviewed by Martin Liebman November 25, 2011

One must wonder whether Disorganized Crime is one of those unfortunate movies that was built around a clever title rather than seeing a clever title naturally evolve from its story. The former sure looks to be the case because, well, yes, the movie is awfully disorganized in its own right. Director Jim Kouf's flick is decent overall and well-meaning, but the movie is just all over the place. Its script can't hammer out much of a straight, memorable plot. The humor is iffy, the tone is unclear, the style shifts around all over the map, the characters are hit-or-miss, the editing seems out of whack, the pacing is sluggish, and the direction suffers from its need to focus on balancing out all of the trouble spots rather than enhancing and refining the material. Disorganized Crime is saved from bottom-of-the-barrel awfulness by a couple of steady performances from Lou Diamond Phillips, Rubén Blades and Fred Gwynne; they play their unsatisfying paint-by-number characters with as much charm and wit as they can muster, but the movie is an otherwise forgettable venture into the Action/Comedy/Heist/Who-Knows-What hybrid canon.

Disheveled and disorganized.

Frank Salazar (Corbin Bernsen) is a wanted man on the run for a string of bank robberies in New Jersey. He's in hiding more than halfway across the country in a small Montana town where he's found a relatively easy target: a little bank with half a million just waiting to be plucked from its vault. To pull off the job, however, he's going to need help. Enter four of his closest friends-in-crime: Max Green (Fred Gwynne), Carlos Barrios (Rubén Blades), Ray Forgy (Lou Diamond Phillips), and Nick Bartkowski (William Russ). Unfortunately, just as these crooks arrive in town, Frank is captured by two detectives, George Denver (Ed O'Neill) and Bill Lonigan (Daniel Roebuck). Max and friends find Frank's hideout abandoned, and without the leadership only their now-in-custody partner can provide, the group quickly falls to pieces. Can these bumbling misfits regroup and pull off the crime of the, um, uh, week? month? before the equally inept law enforcement officials get their hands on them and, worse, put Frank away for good?

Disorganized Crime is the proverbial "tough nut to crack," and what's really bad is that once it's broken, there's not a whole lot that's worthwhile on the inside. This is a movie that's completely unsure of itself, and boy does it ever show. There's no consistency in any one area; the performances are the closest thing to "adequate," but even they are dampened by a rather generic character roster that sees not a single one of them develop into anything even remotely resembling a likable hero, villain, or anything in between. They're all just sort of there, doing their parts to advance the script, a script that is itself difficult to sort out, never quite finding its stride and never, really, identifying itself as any one particular style. Is it a Comedy? Is it an Action movie? Is it Heist film? Is it a chase film? The smart money is on the first on that list; everything seems to play towards a comedic tone, from the performances to the score, but there's a general unevenness and a disturbing lack of genuine laughs. The result is a movie that's more or less on cruise control; it moves along steadily, albeit slowly, with no destination in mind, no style to emote, no heart or soul on which to build its ancillary elements. If ever there was a movie that just is, it's Disorganized Crime.

If there's one good thing about Disorganized Crime, it's the film's small-town Montana setting. The last thing the world needs is another New York or generic big-city setting; been there, done that, gonna happen again. The small town/country setting allows the movie to go in a few different directions and cull its humor from a few relatively untapped sources, but again that lack of cohesion winds up more or less negating the small town element positive. It doesn't need to be "Twin Peaks" brilliant, but it's a real shame that Disorganized Crime can't take much advantage of a somewhat similar setting. There's definitely potential for high Comedy misadventure, but the movie misfires at every opportunity. A scene featuring the would-be bank robbers hiding form distant gunfire (could Frank be battling his way back to the house?) and subsequently checking it out only to find a couple of kids plinking with their .22s could have turned into something better than one of the characters blasting the kids' targets out of sheer anger at the situation. What might have been an opportunity for clumsy-good back-and-forth dialogue between the groups is instead just a bland scene that probably worked better in the writer's imagination than it did on film. That's pretty much the whole movie. There's a fair story here, but the execution is just lacking at every turn.

Disorganized Crime Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Disorganized Crime makes its Blu-ray debut with a trustworthy 1080p, 1.85:1-framed transfer. Though it shows some warts from time to time -- there's some scattered print wear, heaviest during the opening titles but a regular guest throughout the movie -- Mill Creek's transfer nevertheless impresses with fair colors and good detail. The small-town setting delivers very nice, very filmic textures. Brick walls, paved streets, and various odds and ends around storefronts are almost downright handsome. Faces can be a little flat, ditto clothes, but a moderate layer of grain preserves a nice-looking cinematic flavor. Colors are neither dull nor vibrant. bright outdoor scenes look quite good, but nighttime scenes offer little sanctuary from crushing blacks. Slight background blocking is sometimes evident, and faces struggle with shadow detail and color gradations in lower lighting conditions. For the most part, however, there's very little not to like about the movie's many bright outdoor scenes. They're crisp, colorful, nicely detailed, and flat-out steady. Other scenes see some problems, but the good does outweigh the not-so-good.

Disorganized Crime Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Disorganized Crime stumbles onto Blu-ray with a haphazard but ultimately satisfactory DTS-HD MA 2.0 lossless soundtrack. Mill Creek's audio presentation has its share of downs, but its better attributes come out on top by movie's end. Music is fairly spacious, taking advantage of the front channels. However, it's somewhat lacking in clarity, and sounds downright mushy in a few spots. Dialogue follows suit, sometimes playing with a shallowness and unevenness. It occasionally drifts off to the side rather than staying planted in the middle, but for the most part it does remain clear and grounded in the center channel. Some sound effects prove halfway convincing, while others could use some spit and polish. Gunshots enjoy a good, positive energy, but slamming car doors play with a decidedly muffled presence. Ambience does well to spread around the front, primarily coming in the form of buzzing insects in several nighttime scenes. This is a decidedly middle-of-the-road catalogue title Blu-ray soundtrack. It gets the job done in lossless fashion, but it still leaves a lot to be desired.

Disorganized Crime Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Disorganized Crime contains no supplemental content.

Disorganized Crime Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Disorganized Crime is a disorganized movie that never finds its tone or its purpose. The movie wanders more than Cain, going just about everywhere except to a coherent structure and a satisfying conclusion. This isn't a terrible film, but it's completely forgettable, except for maybe just what a mishmash of styles that it is. A few solid performances save it from complete obscurity, but it should be pretty low on the rental cue and certainly not on any "bucket list" except, maybe, for Lou Diamond Phillips completists or something like that. Mill Creek's Blu-ray release of Disorganized Crime contains no extras, but it does deliver solid video and passable audio. Blu-ray fans looking to upsize their collections might want to add it considering its bargain bin price, but most should put that money towards something a little more worthwhile.