Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Fast Color Blu-ray Movie Review

X-Women?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 10, 2019

Remember when Heroes was supposed to be “the next Lost”? If you don’t, you’re evidently not alone, as Heroes never seemed to quite capture the cultural zeitgeist in the same way that Lost arguably did — for a while, anyway. Fast Color kind of reminded me of Heroes, though, with a family of “mutants” whose unusual powers don’t always mean better lives for them. In other ways, Fast Color almost plays like the flip side of Waterworld , with a blighted landscape more or less devoid of liquid, in what might be called dystopian if there were only some kind of “topia” somewhere (in terms of a developed urban environment). Fast Color tries awfully hard — too hard, some may feel — to ply a metaphorical conceit within at least some science fiction elements. If the film’s underlying subtext is a bit muddled, Fast Color benefits from the appropriately raw, at times almost feral, presence of Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ruth, a woman on the run — both from and towards something.

There’s some really interesting data you can find online if you so choose about the supposed genetic component of trauma being passed from the generation that experienced it to their children (and beyond). Some headline making news a few years ago suggested that Holocaust survivors had passed their horrors on in some kind of genetic way to their offspring, and while that particular study has been refuted (at least on a genetic level), there are a number of other similar stories that a cursory Google search will uncover. Even if there isn’t a genetic component to trauma being passed on from parent to child, it’s probably inarguable that there can at least be some kind of psychological component shared between family members that is most likely inescapable.

That genetic component is both hinted at and finally overtly addressed in Fast Color, though like several other elements in the film, it takes a while to get there. The film begins with some voiceover from a character ultimately identified as Bo (Lorraine Toussaint), who is talking about someone named Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). The film's opening act actually deals pretty solely with Ruth, documenting her escape from some kind of confinement, while also detailing a world that has not seen rain for eight years, and where water is a prized commodity. Ruth is obviously on the run from some nefarious types, and she's prone to weird flashbacks that ironically have quite a bit of water in them. She's also prone to violent seizures which radiate out into the world, causing seismic disturbances that would probably place pretty highly on the Richter Scale.

Shadowy investigative figures are seen at a hotel where Ruth stayed for a few minutes before experiencing one of those seizures and causing an earthquake. She's since beaten a hasty exit, but an ominous foreboding starts to creep into an already somewhat troubling ambience. When Ruth stops at a diner to have a quick bite to eat, she's chatted up by a guy named Bill (Christopher Denham), who initially seems like a random stranger but who soon is revealed to be one of those shadowy types on the hunt for Ruth. She manages to escape his clutches, if only barely, finally ending up at the isolated home of Bo, who turns out to be Ruth's mother. Bo is also caring for Lila (Saniyya Sidney), Ruth's daughter whom she abandoned years previously, though for perhaps noble reasons.

A quick look at a "sobriety token" Ruth fondles for a moment, as well as some brief dialogue where Ruth tells Bo she's been sober for months alludes to some substance abuse issues, though in this case it turns out Ruth had been "self medicating" to keep herself from having seizures. With her current state of abstinence, the seizures have returned. This middle section of the film also reveals that both Bo and Lila have their own special powers, in this case what Bo refers to as "parlor tricks", the ability to dematerialize an object and then "reassemble" it at will.

Co-writer and director Julia Hart engages in a fair amount of misdirection with regard to another investigative character, a sheriff named Ellis (David Straitharn) who might be assumed to be part of the cabal trying to track down Ruth, but who has a more intimate connection to the story. Fast Color obviously is an ode to female empowerment (as is explicitly discussed in the making of featurette included on this Blu-ray disc as a supplement), but some of the tangents here, including the whole drought aspect, may not be as fully realized as some viewers may want. That said, this is a fascinating treatment of a roiling family dynamic, and it has a decided emotional component that makes it a rather unique film in the annals of supposed science fiction offerings.

Fast Color Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Fast Color is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is another release that I haven't been able to dredge up much technical data on, though in the unintentional Google irony department, it turns out that Arri Alexa cameras have a "fast color filter" available, so maybe that's a hint. As usual, I'm assuming things were finished at a 2K DI. The film has a few rather interesting and kind of cool looking moments of CGI, including Bo "dissolving" her cigarette, and Lila doing the same with a bowl. There's a brief sequence late in the film where Ruth finally sees the "fast colors", "echoes" (as Lila terms it) of the molecular refashionings the family is able to achieve. Otherwise, though, this really won't set science fiction fans' hearts on fire in terms of nonstop visual blandishments. Instead, there's a kind of bleak, dusty ambience to much of the film, with some interesting grading choices that include both a variety of yellows and kind of blue-greens. When not intentionally tweaked, the palette looks natural and detail levels are typically very good to excellent. Some interior footage, including the hotel scene and a later bar sequence where Ruth is able to score some food for washing the dishes, don't offer a wealth of shadow detail. This is one of the few Lionsgate releases where I noticed just a hint of banding, but there were no other serious anomalies that I spotted.

Fast Color Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Fast Color's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 rumbles to life during an early scene where Ruth experiences a seizure, and it has bursts of surround activity throughout, notably in the very brief flashbacks that detail a traumatic event in Ruth's past that also involved Lila. Otherwise, though, this is a pretty relentlessly talky feature that tends to attain its subtle surround activity due to ambient environmental sounds. Since a lot of the film takes place outside, that at least provides a bed of effects dotting the surrounds, but this is really not a "showy" track in a traditional science fiction manner. Fidelity is fine throughout, and there are no problems with dropouts, distortion or other damage.

Fast Color Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Writer / Director Julia Hart and Writer / Producer Jordan Horowitz


• A Mother's Power: Making Fast Color (1080p; 15:29) is the expected aggregation of footage from the movie, behind the scenes moments, and interviews.

Fast Color Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fast Color is the rare science fiction(-esque?) offering that has a fair degree of emotional energy due to the family dynamic it explores. The three females at the core of the story are brought memorably to life by Mbatha-Raw, Toussaint and Sidney, and Straitharn is also a centered presence throughout the film. The character of Bill is kind of a cartoonish villain, and some of the story's subtext may not be clear enough or at least developed enough to really register. Interestingly, it looks like Fast Color may be "the next Heroes", in that it's evidently being developed as a television series. Technical merits are generally solid, and Fast Color comes Recommended.