5.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A former race car driver is abducted by a mysterious thief and forced to be the wheel-man for a crime that puts them both in the sights of the cops and the mob.
Starring: John Cusack, Thomas Jane, Zoe Ventoura, Christopher Morris (IV)Crime | 100% |
Action | 85% |
Comedy | 4% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
John Cusack has routinely played outsiders, going back to his early defining roles in Better Off Dead and Say Anything. But ever since playing neurotic hitman Martin Blank in the cult classic Grosse Point Blank, Cusack seems to be drawn to characters who are definitively antisocial: contract killers, cold-blooded criminals, even borderline psychopaths. It's almost as if he'd found a specialty, and it can't just be typecasting, since Cusack often develops his own material. Unfortunately for the audience, too many of these characters have lacked the signature quality that made Martin Blank so memorable and entertaining, which was his darkly humorous edge. From the troubled hitman in War, Inc. to the conflicted government agent in The Numbers Station to the terrifying "Clem" in Grand Piano to the suspicious lackey in The Bag Man, Cusack's bad guys have ceased to be fun. Apparently, what Cusack needed was a trip to Australia. In the quicky Oz production Drive Hard, Cusack plays a skilled American thief who has a score to settle with a crime syndicate headquartered in the Gold Coast of Queensland. His character claims he's never killed anyone, but that sounds like a technical evasion, given the behavior he demonstrates throughout the film. (As Tom Cruise says in Collateral: "I shot him. The bullet and the fall killed him.") The role was originally intended for Jean-Claude Van Damme, but when the Muscles from Brussels dropped out and Cusack suddenly became available, writer/director Brian Trenchard-Smith, a famed veteran of Ozsploitation, hurriedly rewrote the script and let Cusack and co-star Thomas Jane (The Punisher) develop the film's central relationship during a fast-paced eighteen-day shoot. Trenchard-Smith's specialty is creating the illusion of a much bigger budget than he actually has. The title of the film may be Drive Hard and Jane's character may be a former race car driver, but the demolition derby sequences are relatively limited. Trenchard-Smith knows he can't compete with a Hollywood franchise like the Fast and Furious series, and he doesn't try. Far more interesting than the car chases is the interplay between Cusack and Jane, which Trenchard-Smith has likened to that of Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin in Midnight Run. That may be setting the bar too high, but the comparison gives an apt sense of what Drive Hard does best.
Drive Hard was shot on Red by Tony O'Loughlan, making his first feature film as cinematographer after a career as a camera operator and in visual effects. With post-production completed on a digital intermediate, Image Entertainment/RLJ's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced directly from digital files, and the result should certainly satisfy enthusiasts looking for the pristine, sharply defined appearance typical of contemporary HD video productions. Edges are crisp and well-defined, detail is plentiful and colors are vibrant throughout. There are scenes in Drive Hard that would fit neatly into a promotional video for travel to the Gold Coast, because they make it look so inviting. Coupled with the complete absence of noise or other artifacts, the clarity of the Blu-ray's image makes this production a pleasure to watch. Image has sometimes been known to starve their Blu-ray presentations for bandwidth, but this 96-minute film has no extras and therefore achieves an average bitrate of 26.20 Mbps, which is very good for Red-originated footage and no doubt contributes in some measure to the superior quality of the final product.
The film's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, packs the requisite punch for gunfire and the impact of vehicles against each other and a variety of obstacles blocking their path. The bass extension provides an appropriate rumble for the vehicles of the motorcycle gang that catches up with Roberts and Keller on the open highway. The shootout that occurs shortly afterward is particularly impressive. Subtlety is not something to expect from a Trenchard-Smith production. When Roberts takes the wheel and evades, first, the police, and then the syndicate, there's a lot of whizzing and squealing, but don't look for any of the precise sense of placement or directionality that one might find in a big-budget studio film. They don't call Trenchard-Smith "the Australian Roger Corman" for nothing.
The disc has no extras, but at startup it plays trailers for The Numbers Station, Rage , Odd Thomas and Tomorrow You're Gone. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are otherwise unavailable once the disc loads.
Drive Hard is not a polished production. Trenchard-Smith's work rarely is. But there's a distinctive quality about it, or he wouldn't be one of Quentin Tarantino's favorite filmmakers. I suspect it's the older director's knack for giving an unexpected spin to what, in other hands, might be merely formulaic junk. In this case, that means pairing Cusack and Jane in an absurd situation within the framework of a routine crime film. It's the details that make it worthwhile, like Cusack's omnipresent e-cigarette or the throwaway exchanges between the elderly granny and her long-suffering husband or Jane's stammering inability to explain to his wife how he got strong-armed into driving a getaway car. If you can enjoy this kind of embroidery, Drive Hard is for you. The Blu-ray presentation certainly can't be faulted.
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