5.8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.4 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.7 |
Jill Parrish comes home from a night shift to discover her sister Molly has been abducted. Jill, who had escaped from a kidnapper a year before, is convinced that the same serial killer has come back for her sister. Afraid that Molly will be dead by sundown, Jill embarks on a heart-pounding chase to find the killer, expose his secrets and save her sister.
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Daniel Sunjata, Jennifer Carpenter, Sebastian Stan, Wes BentleyThriller | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
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
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
It’s not easy living in Oregon, let alone Portland. Take the constant rain—please. (Thanks to Henny Youngman, kind of.) Then there’s our portrayal in various mass media, especially lately, where this little burg nestled near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers has become a cause célèbre of sorts, and not necessarily in a good way. Lovers of the IFC series Portlandia are, let’s face it, laughing at us Oregonians, not with us, despite the desperate insistence of many of my fellow Portland denizens to the contrary. We also serve as the backdrop for Grimm, a series which exploits the dank, dark and moldy clime of the Pacific Northwest. At least people aren’t laughing (intentionally, anyway) at that show. Leverage at least does a nice job of showing off some of the sleeker aspects of the Portland metropolitan region, but only recently has had the courage to actually identify Oregon’s biggest city as its actual locale. Our history with films isn’t exactly stellar, either, despite the legendary One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest having been filmed here. The Oregonian just did a big feature on another film adaptation of a Ken Kesey novel that was shot here, Sometimes a Great Notion, and about the most memorable thing about the article was the recounting of an anecdote where a drunk and disorderly Paul Newman stumbled into a bar with a chainsaw and cut off the legs of a pool table. Oregon has also provided the admittedly lush scenery for any number of films, including everything from Bend in the River to Paint Your Wagon, but to quote another disheveled comedian, more often than not, Oregon and Portland “don’t get no respect” when it comes to film and television. That trend continues unabated in the largely lamentable Gone, one of those one word title high concept thrillers (like Taken, for example) whose title is actually an unwitting commentary on where the quality of the film is (or isn’t, as the case may be).
Gone, like the simultaneously released Man on a Ledge, is one of the first Blu-ray releases from the new merger of Lionsgate and Summit Films. So far the results are very good indeed. Like Man on a Ledge, Gone also boasts an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. The two transfers are similar in more ways than one, with crisp and appealing imagery which exhibits some very pleasing fine object detail. Gone was filmed with a Red Camera, and so has the somewhat flat aspect of digitally shot features. It's also been excessively filtered at the DI stage, so once again we have a thriller bathed in shades of blue. Contrast is very low at times (again—perhaps a bit more strangely this time—like Man on a Ledge) and there is outright crush in the final showdown scene, due to much of the scene playing out with next to no light.
Gone boasts a fairly aggressive lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that has some very nice attention to detail, including some great environmental ambient effects. The opening sequence in Portland's gorgeous Forest Park is a great example, with breeze rustling through the trees (and the surround channels) and the quiet babbling of a nearby brook very capably recreating a lifelike outdoor feeling. The film has the typical jump cuts with attendant LFE effects, which will of course produce a startle effect if nothing else. It's interesting to note that the soundtrack actually becomes more important than it might perhaps have been otherwise in the film's climax, simply because so little can be seen. Dialogue is clear and the pretty standard minor keyed underscore creates a decent amount of tension. Fidelity is excellent throughout the track and dynamic range is also wide and varied.
Perhaps indicative of what Summit expects for this title on home video, there are no supplements of any kind on the Blu-ray disc.
Come on, film and television creatives! Portland deserves better than this. Here's an idea: a nerdy Portland Blu-ray reviewer finds himself transported to a magical world where films are actually innovative and have something new to offer. No, you're right: it would probably cost too much to make a fantasy of such epic proportions. Of course I joke, but if you manage to sit through Gone without sighing heavily or rolling your eyes at the patent absurdity of it all, you're a better man and/or woman than I am. The only saving grace here is indeed the spooky twilight ambience granted by Oregon's largest city and its surrounding forests. Seyfried fans may want to check this out if they're rabid completists, otherwise Gone really doesn't have a lot to offer, despite this Blu-ray's superior video and audio.
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