6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
A teenager and his kid brother spar with their mother's shady new boyfriend in this dramatic thriller from veteran British director Michael Apted.
Starring: Teri Garr, Peter Weller, Christopher Collet, Corey Haim, Sarah Jessica ParkerThriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 16-bit)
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Chances are at some point in your life either your Mother or your Father, or perhaps both, engaged in reciting what seem to be variations on a universal parental mantra, usually something like either “Life isn’t fair” or “There are no guarantees in life”. Interestingly, and no doubt not coincidentally, those very statements are made in Firstborn, and in fact the film starts out with a proto-1980’s rock tune by The Nobodys called “No Guarantees”. While there are obvious thematic connections to these ideas in the film, one might be tempted to look outside the film a bit and wonder about life’s inequities, at least as they’ve been visited upon Firstborn’s star, Teri Garr. In the 1980’s Garr seemed poised to become one the shining lights of the industry, a gifted actress who was obviously a spritely comedienne, but who also seemed to have some untapped dramatic depths as well, as Firstborn itself proves quite admirably. With several huge hit films under her belt, including Young Frankenstein and her Oscar nominated turn in Tootsie, Garr had proven box office appeal and also had a long history as a dancer and singer that seemingly only widened her prospects. But the vagaries of show business are legendary, and even before Garr shared the sad news in 2002 that she was battling multiple sclerosis, her career seemed to have stalled, if not outright stopped, with few A-list films to her credit and few if any roles that really stretched her talents much if at all. A further health scare with a brain aneurysm confined Garr to a wheelchair for a time, and though she’s bravely battled back from both that and her MS predicament, she hasn’t made a film since 2007 and may end up being best remembered for her 1970’s and 1980’s oeuvre. Firstborn is at first (and perhaps even second) glance a rather odd entry in the Garr filmography, a melodrama positing Garr’s character of Wendy as an abused divorcée too desperate for a man in her life to see the harm that man is inflicting not just on her but on her two sons.
Firstborn is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. What is it about 1980's film stock that is so damnably ugly so much of the time? While the elements here seem to be in rather good shape, this high definition transfer is rather soft and shoddy looking a lot of the time, with indistinct fine object detail and an overall gauzy appearance a lot of the time which is not helped by wildly inconsistent contrast, murky shadow detail and milky black levels. Colors are frequently garish, and reds tilt toward the orange side of things more often than not. Grain approaches digital noise levels throughout this presentation, but I have a hunch this is more or less exactly what the film looked like in its theatrical exhibition (I confess I never saw the film in theaters).
Firstborn's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix is fairly unremarkable, though it also has little to really complain about. The source music cues sound reasonably vigorous. (It's fun if a bit sad to hear a tune by a little remembered band from my hometown of Portland, Billy Rancher and the Unreal Gods. Billy seemed to be on the verge of superstardom but was sadly sidelined and then ultimately died at a very young age from lymphoma.) Dialogue is fairly crisp and clean and the track is well prioritized, though there really isn't much here to write home about, either good or bad. Fidelity is fine, and dynamic range is decently wide.
This Olive Films release has no supplements of any kind.
Firstborn is a strange little film, one that builds its inconsistent melodramatic energy in fits and starts before tipping over the edge into a kind of Grand Guignol windup that sees Weller chewing the scenery even as he beats the living crap out of everybody in sight. What an odd choice for a director of Michael Apted's aptitude to make, but Apted does elicit uniformly fine performances out of everyone. What, though, is the ultimate point of Koslow's screenplay? If it's something as sanguine as "life isn't fair", it's an awfully smarmy way to make that obvious point. This film would have done better to have exulted in its Lifetime-esque roots (even if the film predates that cable channel's existence by several years), and let Wendy and her sons have some real down home vengeance on their tormentor instead of basically waving bye bye to him at the end of the film. This Blu-ray offers underwhelming video and acceptable audio. Cultists may want to check it out for the early work by Downey, Parker and Haim, as well as the chance to see Garr in a rare dramatic role.
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