Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

Don McKay Blu-ray Movie Review

A bizarre neo-noir of no distinction.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater June 17, 2010

For an agent-less first-time writer/director, Jake Goldberger hit the casting jackpot. While trying to get his fledgling indie thriller off the ground, Goldberger threw the Hollywood equivalent of a Hail Mary —shooting off unsolicited scripts to actors he thought might be game. Unbelievably, Goldberger got a call from Sideways star Thomas Hayden Church—on the day Church got nominated for an Oscar, no less—who agreed to not only take the lead role, but also serve as executive producer, drumming up funds for a development deal. Wow-wow-wee-wow. Now that’s a heart-stopper. I wish, then, that I could say Don McKay—the resultant film of this one-in-a-million lucky shot—was meant to be, that it’s every bit as miraculous and mysterious and awe-inspiring as the stroke of fortune that got it made. Unfortunately, it’s not. Goldberger claims to be inspired by the likes of Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and the Coen brothers—Blood Simple, in particular—but his attempt at a semi-comic, coal-black neo-noir is cluttered and convoluted, less an homage than a bizarre, unintentional parody.

The lonely Don McKay...

We open on Don McKay (Thomas Hayden Church), a depressed loner, waxing the floors in the high school where he’s worked as a janitor for the past twenty-five years. Life has clearly been dull for this mop-haired, jumpsuit-wearing mop-wielder, but that’s about to change, and not for the better. At the front desk, there’s a letter for him. It’s from Sonny (Elisabeth Shue), the one time love of his life, whom he hasn’t heard from since 1983, despite sending her nearly-novel-length letters every year. Sonny summons him back to their hometown, but it turns out she’s dying of some unnamed disease and wants to spend her final days with Don by her side. Or, rather, in bed with her. (“I could never find love after you,” she tells him before jumping his bones, and it’s here that we sense something is up.) This doesn’t go over well with Sonny’s prim live-in nurse Marie (Melissa Leo), or her oddly possessive physician, Dr. Pryce (James Rebhorn), who attacks Don after finding out about the rekindled relationship. (“You little cocksucker! I’m going to kill you! Die! Die!”) Don accidentally kills the doctor in self-defense—with a jagged shard of broken milk bottle—and buries him under some leaves in the woods behind the house. In the process, he gets stung by a bee, has an allergic reaction, and wakes up in the hospital, where Sonny asks him to marry her. Back at the house, the doctor’s body has gone missing, but that doesn’t stop Don from getting threatening calls from a dead man.

Act one plays out as a spitfire barrage of narrative mysteries: What does Elizabeth—the film’s blond-tressed femme fatale, slinking around in a satin nightie—really want? Is she actually sick? What’s up with Dr. Pryce’s fly-off-the-handle jealousy? Where did his body go? Why is there an ax hanging in the entryway? Why is Marie—the film’s Hitchcockian mother figure—so unflappably odd? And what’s all this ambiguous talk about an accident in a tree house back in the early 1980s? All are valid questions, but the way the film chooses to set them up—and ultimately, answer them—is just plain tonally weird. For about the first forty-five minutes of Don McKay, my reaction was a perpetual state of is this a joke? Am I supposed to be taking this seriously? Too lifelessly droll to be an outright black comedy, and too willfully kooky to be a straight noir, Don McKay exists in a gray area of indeterminate intention, part slipshod farce, and part underwhelming homage. At times it seems to be poking fun at the conventions of its genre—the femme fatale playing the sympathy card, the “everything is not as it seems” conspiracy—but it’s also reliant on these noir staples and relentlessly self-serious. I wondered for most of the film why I couldn’t put my finger on what the first-time director was trying to do here, and then I realized—his own vision of the film was no more certain.

Even the inevitable unfolding of the mystery—which requires a great deal of so, this is why and how I did it-style exposition—lacks any sense of cohesion, as the characters’ motivations are never entirely convincing. Or, in the case of Don, not convincing at all. (Seriously, the final reveal of Don’s place in this tortuous would-be thriller is so bad of an eye-roller you might need to schedule a trip to your optometrist.) With a script so internally conflicted between being a neo-noir and being a parody of a neo-noir, it’s no surprise that the performances are all over the place. Arch and deliriously over-the-top, James Rebhorn and Melissa Leo are way out in loony character land, and wouldn’t look out of place in Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety, a true Hitchcock/noir lampoon. The same goes for M. Emmett Walsh—the detective from Blood Simple—who plays a hard-of-hearing cab driver here. At least Elisabeth Shue has a handle on her role, playing Sonny as an off-kilter, developmentally arrested con-artist, flipping out maniacally when the whole charade backfires. Thomas Hayden Church just looks glum, dumb, and disappointed for the duration, and that’s likely how you’ll feel by the end as well.

Don McKay Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Considering its small budget, Don McKay looks quite good on Blu-ray, with a 1080p/AVC- encoded transfer, framed in a screen-filling 1.78:1 aspect ratio. This is a very un-stylized film, with no over-obvious post-production color grading or contrast boosting, so what we get is a realistic-looking image, with somewhat muted colors and natural skin tones. Most scenes are cast in a dim, grayish blue pallor, matching Don's janitor jumpsuit and the film's bleak, semi-comic tone. There's not much here that could be called vibrant or eye-popping, but there doesn't need to be. While you'll notice the occasional soft shot—due to slightly off focusing—most of the time the image is surprisingly sharp and resolved. You'll be able to make out all the wrinkles and pores on Thomas Hayden Church's vaguely Stephen King-ish face, and count every hair in James Rebhorn's creepy mustache. Some shots, like the one of Don waxing the floor of the school's long hallway, have a genuinely impressive sense of depth. Black levels are fairly deep and consistent, shadow delineation is good, and the image sports a thin grain structure, giving the picture a warm, filmic texture. Though the feature sits on a 25 GB, single-layer disc—with a fairly low bit-rate—I didn't spot any overt compression-related troubles.

Don McKay Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Likewise, the film's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is fairly dynamic and expressive for a no- budget thriller. The mix is mostly front-heavy, with an emphasis on dialogue—as you'd expect from a talky would-be neo-noir, confined to only a few locations—but the moments of violence in the film are effectively punctuated by a potent blend of low-end LFE rumble and jarring score. The surround channels are used sparsely, mostly for quiet ambience—outdoorsy bird and cricket sounds, small town traffic, a room's airy hush—and I can't recall any distinct cross-channel movements. Still, the effects are clean and detailed—like the always-portentous trill of a boiling tea kettle—and when Steven Bramson's music kicks in, it fills up the soundfield with ominous orchestration and what sounds, at times, like a far-off bagpipe, atonally droning. Dialogue is always bright and clear in the mix, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available in easy-to-read white lettering.

Don McKay Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Commentary with Director Jake Goldberger and Producer Jim Young
It's never a good sign when the director starts off by calling his film a "cinematic masterpiece," even if he's joking. Still, the first time director and his producer deliver an informative, laugh-filled track that details just about every element of the production.

Deleted Scenes (SD, 4:52)
Includes a handful of deleted scenes, most involving an aborted subplot with the principal of the school where Don works.

Trailer (1080p)

Don McKay Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

With its overcomplicated plot and inconsistent tone—veering frequently from self-serious to laugh-out- loud—Don McKay never quite comes together like the Blood Simple-inspired neo-noir first time writer/director Jake Goldberger wants it to be, despite the valiant, if scattershot efforts of its game cast. There's definitely some entertainment to be had in the dueling-weirdos interplay between Thomas Hayden Church and Elisabeth Shue, but not enough for me to recommending anything more than a rental.