Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.0

Eureka Blu-ray Movie Review

Where's Professor Peacock when you really need him?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 9, 2016

One of the more amusing moments in Jane Fonda’s enjoyable commentary on the recent Twilight Time release of Julia is what sounds like her almost appalled reaction when she discloses that Nicolas Roeg was originally assigned to direct that film. “Can you imagine?” she more or less asks, in a sort of shocked tone that seems to suggest that Roeg’s penchant for the outré may not have been the best fit for the supposed memoirs of Lillian Hellman. Roeg’s filmography is distinctive, to say the least, featuring a patently odd grabbag of releases which includes Performance, Walkabout, Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth. Roeg’s often disjunctive style has tended to alienate him from some audience members (and considering Fonda’s commentary, perhaps some actors as well), and that tendency may also tend to accrue with regard to Eureka, a typically weird Roeg offering that manages to combine near The Revenant-esque scenes of Man vs. Nature with a spooky supernatural ambience that takes a page out of films like The Gift . Add in other elements that are at least tangentially connected to such disparate offerings as The Believers to any given murder mystery and there is at least some indication of what a casserole of odd ingredients Eureka can be at times. These seemingly weird aspects are only half of the story (in more ways than one, actually), as Eureka’s sometimes diffuse screenplay covers the exploits of a prospector named Jack McCann (Gene Hackman) who hits it big, only to find out that sometimes when dreams come true, nightmares strangely tend to follow.

It may not rise to the level of “who was the real Jack the Ripper?”, but another longstanding mystery is actually behind the core story that scenarist Paul Mayersberg tells in Eureka, a story culled from the historical tome Who Killed Sir Harry Oakes?, by Marshall Houts. Houts was an author whose tours of service with the CIA, FBI and OSS gave the book a certain ring of investigatory authenticity (Houts also evidently wrote the book which inspired the long running Quincy, M.E. series, at least according to the frequently unreliable Wikipedia). Oakes was, like McCann in the film, a prospector who made a fortune with a gold mine and who then moved to the Bahamas. Though born in the United States, Oakes evidently became a British citizen and he was ultimately knighted (hence that “Sir” in his name). His philanthropic and entrepreneurial activities seemed to suggest a man above reproach, but when he was found murdered in 1943 under extremely questionable circumstances (and with some really odd tangential elements surrounding the killing), Oakes’ legacy became decidedly more shaded.

Eureka begins in the wilds of the Yukon, with the sort of frigid ambience that made The Revenant so visceral. McCann is involved in some sort of conflict with a couple of other people, but as with so much in this film, nothing is very clearly delineated. When McCann witnesses a gruesome suicide, he seems to tip over into near madness, only to end up getting rescued by, or at least finding refuge with, a kind of fortune teller “working girl” (there must have been a lot of those, right?) named Frieda (Helen Kallianiotes). That relationship ends up leading McCann to his big “find”, making him one of the richest men in the world.

The quasi hallucinatory ambience that Roeg so often pursues works rather well in his opening gambit, even if some narrative strands are not very well handled. But then the film takes the first of several disjunctive changes, moving ahead several years to find McCann ensconced in the Caribbean where some more soap operatic elements enter the fray, where Roeg's penchant for nonlinear storytelling and bizarre visual sidebars pay fewer dividends. The plot begins to involve some roiling family dysfunctions courtesy of McCann’s relationship with his headstrong daughter Tracy (Theresa Russell) and her machinating lover Claude (Rutger Hauer). But family problems are not the only issues McCann is facing in this isolated paradise, since a scheming mobster named Mayakofsky (Joe Pesci), a character probably modeled on Meyer Lansky, is trying to finagle McCann out of his paradise so that casinos can be built there instead.

The fact that Oakes was killed under still debated circumstances may let the cat out of the bag (or the sacrificed voodoo rooster shorn of its feathers, so to speak) as to where Eureka ends up going, but once again Roeg dispenses with traditional mystery conceits, spending a lot of time on what is a more or less obvious red herring without ever offering the kind of cathartic “Moishe the Explainer” moment that would put at least some of its chaotic plot points into some kind of organized order. Not to be too glib about it, but it's kind of like watching Clue, but with things so inadequately detailed that you end up feeling Clueless. Eureka is often quite arresting (no pun intended), but it tends to achieve that feeling through its sheer oddness rather than any inherently compelling material.

Eureka Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Eureka is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.84:1. While the aspect ratio on this release is just a tad less wide (1.84 vs. 1.85) than the British release reviewed by Svet Atanasov, this offering has many of the same pluses and minuses that Svet detailed. Culled from the MGM catalog (by way of United Artists), this transfer can look quite good in brightly lit environments, or frankly sometimes even in moderately lit ones, with good reproduction of the palette, nice detail levels, and commendable sharpness and clarity (see screenshot 3 for just one good example). However, there are recurrent problems here that I've attempted to provide several examples of in screenshots 15 through 19, and I'll simply let those examples "speak" for themselves. The elements show regular if minor signs of age related wear and tear, with typical issues like flecks and specks dotting the image. As with Svet's assessment, I'm grading this at around a 3.25, but I've given this an "official" score of 3.0 to both balance Svet's official score of 3.5 as well as to temper expectations by more demanding videophiles.

Eureka Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Eureka features a workmanlike DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix which adequately supports the dialogue, as well as some sound effects (notably in the Yukon sequences), as well as Stanley Myers' score. The track is a bit shallow sounding at times, but there's no damage of any kind to report.

Eureka Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Writer Paul Meyersberg on Eureka (1080p; 53:18) is a really far reaching and interesting conversation and includes some information on Oakes.


• Producer Jeremy Thomas on Eureka (1080p; 13:35) offers some insight into the genesis of the project.


• Editor Tony Lawson on Eureka (1080p; 13:06) is a good reminiscence by this frequent collaborator with Roeg.


• Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:44)


• MGM 90th Anniversary Trailer (1080p; 2:06)


• Isolated Music and Effects (with Partial Isolated Score) is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.


• Q&A Commentary with Director Nicolas Roeg at the World Premiere

Eureka Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Roeg's films can be an acquired taste, and that may be even more so with regard to Eureka, a film which repeatedly dispenses with audience expectations in its delivery of a story that (to cite one final referent) bears certain similarities to Von Stroheim's legendary Greed. Performances are generally excellent, if a bit florid at times, and Roeg's typically energetic visual sense is certainly on display. My hunch is Jane Fonda will not be picking up a copy of this release. With caveats noted, and for Roeg fans probably more than the public at large, Eureka comes Recommended.