Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Galveston Blu-ray Movie Review

Eye of the Hurricane

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 20, 2018

Writer Nic Pizzolatto can't stop the producers of Galveston from promoting the film with his name as the creator of HBO's moody True Detective, but the credit is something of a cheat. The film is indeed based on Pizzolatto's early novel, and he did write the original screenplay. But French director Mélanie Laurent (best known here as an actor from Inglourious Basterds and Now You See Me) revised the script so substantially that Pizzolatto wanted his name off it. In the film as released, he's credited under the pseudonym of "Jim Hammett".

Galveston is Laurent's first feature made in America and in English, and she has attracted a superb cast to give substance to her bleak tone poem of loss and regret. But like too many actors-turned-director, she isn't a storyteller as much as a character-explorer. Her film takes a deep dive into her characters' emotions, but she's kicked away too much of the narrative scaffolding that would ground expressions of emotion in a story supporting the weight of those feelings. Galveston has moments, especially at the end, where Laurent's approach pays off, but it demands substantial forbearance from the audience before we get there.

Facts and back story are either omitted in Galveston or dropped casually in passing; so what follows might be considered to contain spoilers for anyone who wants to discover Galveston on its own uncompromising terms.

The film's central character is Roy, who is played by Ben Foster, adding to his already formidable roster of finely etched portrayals (Leave No Trace and Hell or High Water are two recent examples). Roy is a small-time crook with a record who works for a New Orleans crime boss named Stan Ptitko (Beau Bridges). The year is 1988, and Roy has just received a dire diagnosis regarding his lungs. No one says the word "cancer", but Roy storms out of the doctor's office and defiantly lights a cigarette. For the rest of Galveston, he will be plagued by uncontrollable fits of coughing.

After Roy's latest assignment from Stan goes badly wrong, he finds himself on the run and points his truck toward Galveston. The exact circumstances of the catastrophe—indeed, the very nature of Roy's assignment from Stan—are only vaguely explained, and Laurent shoots the event itself in such extreme darkness, that you're never entirely sure what happened, but you can make educated guesses from stray bits of dialogue. The important point is that Roy is not alone. He's acquired a traveling companion in the person of "Rocky" (Elle Fanning), a teenage prostitute, who was sitting tearfully at the scene of the failed job because she was hired as bait and presumably meant to die there. Like Roy, Rocky is one of society's throwaways, and while he repeatedly tries to get rid of her, he can't quite bring himself to do so. His concerns only grow when Rocky tricks Roy into waiting while she picks up her three-year-old sister, Tiffany (played by twins Tinsley and Anniston Price), from the abusive household she herself fled.

In Galveston, the trio checks into a motel, suspiciously eyed by the proprietor (C.K. McFarland), who, judging by the yelling from some of the other rooms, isn't all that picky about her clientele. (The police are called at least once during Roy's stay, and not because of him.) Here Roy sits and waits, trying to figure out what to do, as his medical condition deteriorates, and a local small-timer (Robert Aramayo) pressures him to assist with a robbery. Eventually Roy hits upon a scheme designed to give his traveling companions a fresh start, but Galveston's bleak vision doesn't have much room for fresh starts, as Roy's past (and Rocky's) catches up with the group in a series of fiercely violent confrontations.

Riverdale fans will note Lili Reinhart's name in the cast, but be warned: She doesn't appear until the very end of the film, which flashes forward to another time and place, where the landscape is just as wild and threatening as the one we've spent the rest of the film navigating with Roy, Rocky and little Tiffany. Like all the actors in Galveston, Reinhart gives a deeply felt performance that adds to the film's emotional heft, even if her scenes are ultimately unsatisfying as drama.

Galveston Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Specific information about the shooting format of Galveston was unavailable, but it appears to be digital in origin. The cinematographer was Arnaud Potier, who previously worked with director Mélanie Laurent on Breath (Respire) and The Adopted. RLJ Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray reflects all the usual virtues of digital capture, with superior sharpness, clarity and detail—but much of it is dark, exceptionally so. Laurent and Potier were clearly aiming for a noirish atmosphere, with faces half-illuminated and large portions of the frame routinely occupied by blackness (which the Blu-ray handles well). The lighted portions of these scenes are typically tinted either amber or blue (that's blue, not "teal"), which reflects a more contemporary sensibility. Though these shadowy scenes of dark interiors and nighttime criminality predominate, they are sometimes punctuated by shots of striking scenic beauty, as Roy, Rocky and Tiffany make their way along the Gulf Coast toward the city of the title. Colors, when they're visible, range from dully realistic to picture-postcard intense. Densities are steady and consistent. RLJ has mastered Glaveston at an average bitrate of 20.99 Mbps, with a capable encode.

Galveston Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Galveston's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, is surprisingly restrained, even in moments when big effects and active surrounds would seem to be called for (e.g., scenes of a storm from a Gulf hurricane barreling toward landfall). Except for subtle environmental ambiance, the mix is oriented toward the front, because of either budgetary limitations or filmmaker preference. (Note, for example, the scene where Roy slowly walks through the industrial laundry that is Stan Ptitko's headquarters; what should be a roaring din all around is toned down so that the surrounds contain only quiet clicks of machinery.) The dynamic range is broad, which makes the film's occasional bursts of violence register with greater impact. The track's biggest weakness is dialogue, which is frequently buried in the mix, and it doesn't help that Ben Foster has adopted a thick accent that sounds like a combination of the character's native Texas and an additional drawl acquired in New Orleans. But even Elle Fanning's lines are sometimes lost, and Beau Bridges is barely intelligible. I can't be sure whether this is a fault of the original track or the Blu-ray mastering, but it makes an already sketchy plot even more difficult to follow. The piano-heavy score by Marc Chouarain (another veteran of director Laurent's Breathe) is appropriately moody.

Galveston Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of Galveston (1080p; 1.78:1; 17:45): More substantial than the typical studio EPK, this featurette includes interviews with Laurent, Foster, Fanning, Reinhardt, Aramayo and Bridges. All of the actors talk about how much they loved working with the director.



• Introductory Trailers: The film's trailer is not included, although it will almost certainly show up as an introductory trailer on future RLJ discs. At startup, this one plays trailers for Bone Tomahawk, Pilgrimage and Bushwick.

Galveston Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Ben Foster is always terrific, and in Galveston he anchors and elevates what is otherwise a meandering tale of lost souls and hopeless lives. Fanning is also good, as is Reinhart in her brief screen time, and among them they give the film a measure of the tragic gravity for which Nic Pizzolatto's work is known. But I'm not surprised that the author removed his name. Whatever Laurent was aiming for, it's a muddy outcome. Worth a rental at best.