5.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
A police chief who tries to solve a kidnapping that involves a bank robber holding a young boy hostage.
Starring: Bruce Willis, Hayden Christensen, Ty Shelton, Megan Leonard, Gethin AnthonyAction | 100% |
Thriller | 64% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English, English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
Note: It’s impossible to discuss some elements of First Kill without mentioning plot points that some may deem spoilers, though I
have to say anyone not seeing the biggest supposed “twist” coming from about the first moment one character is introduced had better turn in
their Screenplay 101 membership cards. For those wanting to avoid any mention of potential spoiler material, skip down to the technical portions
of the review,
below.
A pretty famous Second Amendment supporter achieved pundit status (for better or worse) with his pronouncement that “the only thing that can
stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” but First Kill throws a potential monkey wrench into that premise by offering a bad
guy with a gun who is supposed to be a good guy and a good guy with a gun who is perhaps drifting over into bad guy territory (under
duress, of course), perhaps making such a generalized comment like that unfortunately useless or at best unhelpfully confusing. The film seems
to be about one thing for much of its running time, with a sudden if expected detour coming late in the proceedings that ostensibly puts everything
in a new context. Will (Hayden Christensen) is a hard working finance guru whose quest for the almighty dollar has left him a little uninvolved with
his home life with his wife Laura (Megan Leonard) and especially his young son Danny (Ty Shelton). When it turns out Danny has been getting
bullied at school, Will has a crisis of conscience and decides to arrange for some male bonding time with his boy by taking the family back to the
rural environment where Will grew up, with a deer hunting escapade part of the festivities. In what almost plays like a potential commercial for
the organization which employs that aforementioned would be pundit, there’s a lustrously shot scene of Will teaching Danny the ins and outs of
proper gun safety protocol, letting him experiment with a rifle with a high powered scope. When the family gets to the town where Will grew up,
though, they have a peculiar interchange with Chief of Police Marvin Howell (Bruce Willis), one that seems fraught with subtext that the film’s
screenplay never adequately details. The film has already shown a bank robbery in its pre-credits sequence, and Howell mentions that some
subterfuge at the local savings and loan has put everyone in the town (including Howell) on edge, and that Will should keep his eyes open. When
Will and Danny head out into the woods on their hunting adventure and more or less literally stumble into a scene involving what seems to be two
of the bank robbers, things look like they might be getting into The
Most Dangerous Game territory, with Will and Danny the assumed targets, but instead the film veers off into a quasi-hostage situation
that admittedly goes to a few unexpected places, even if the overall arc of the film is resolutely predictable.
First Kill is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. The film's closing credits helpfully list the Arri Alexa Mini as the camera of choice, and this digitally captured offering offers generally very sharp imagery with excellent detail levels, at least when lighting regimens allow. The film has been kind of unusually color graded at times, with even supposedly "normal" lighting conditions looking kind of yellow or yellow-green at times, and some of the forest imagery is defintely skewed toward an almost garish yellow-green hue. A couple of rainy storm scenes have a deep blue grading (the making of featurette seems to suggest it was a bright and sunny day when this sequence was shot). These approaches, coupled with a lot of dark scenes, tend to keep some fine detail levels at bay, but in decent lighting, things perk up considerably, to the point that some of the gruesome wounds that are shown may provoke a bit of stomach churning. Director Miller and cinematographer Cox favor a lot of extreme close-ups, something that promotes really good fine detail levels a lot of the time, but the abundance of pretty dark scenes tends to undercut those levels at other times.
Despite having a number of potential elements like forest ambient environmental sounds, manic chases with a number of different vehicles through that forest, and little things like, you know, gunfire, First Kill's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is just a little less boisterous than I was personally expecting. The side and rear channels are certainly engaged, most noticeably in the big set pieces, but it's kind of intermittent usage, with a lot of the surround activity being generated by the score more than anything. Dialogue is always rendered cleanly and the entire track is smartly prioritized and free of any problems.
This may be damning with faint praise, but for my money this is definitely the best of the apparently endless collaborations between Bruce Willis and Steven C. Miller. With a little smarter writing and less telegraphing on the part of Willis this actually could have been a really impressive little thriller, since the portrayal of Levi is so unusual, as is his quasi father-son bonding with Danny. Christensen and Willis just didn't do it for me in the film, though, but fans of the actors may want to check this out nonetheless, and for them technical merits are generally very good.
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