6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 3.2 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.4 |
John Halder is a 'good' and decent individual with family problems: a neurotic wife, two demanding children and a mother suffering from senile dementia. A literary professor, Halder explores his personal circumstances in a novel advocating compassionate euthanasia. When the book is unexpectedly enlisted by powerful political figures in support of government propaganda, Halder finds his career rising in an optimistic current of nationalism and prosperity. Seemingly inconsequential decisions lead to choices, which lead to more choices... with eventually devastating effect.
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Jason Isaacs, Jodie Whittaker, Steven Mackintosh, Mark StrongDrama | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.34:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
It can be an unsettling experience watching a hulking male actor who normally bristles with machismo take on an introspective, quieter role. A good example comes from forty years or so ago, when Robert Mitchum confounded the critics with his turn in the still largely underappreciated David Lean film Ryan’s Daughter. This rough and tumble actor, known as much for his off screen shenanigans as his dashing screen persona played an impotent Irish teacher seduced by one of his former students. The annals of film may not be exactly full of similar attempts by performers to defy their own typecasting, but certainly once the studio system had died down and actors became at least a little more in charge of their own destinies, it became more typical to see them stretch out and try, in the inimitable words of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, something completely different. That same unease at seeing a star more usually associated with action adventure, even mythically infused, roles take on a fumbling, insecure portrayal is front and center in Good, a largely riveting drama which posits Viggo Mortensen as a literature professor swept up in the madness of Nazi Germany. In fact it’s at least passingly interesting that both Mitchum and Mortensen play teachers who are led astray. If in Mitchum’s character’s case, it’s a case of unrequited love with no major consequences (for him, anyway) other than a broken heart, in Mortensen’s character’s case, it’s a situation of being slowly seduced by a sociopolitical madness which led to some of the greatest horrors mankind has ever known. Of course, Mortensen’s John Halder is meant to stand for the German people as a whole, individuals who slowly and ineluctably were drawn into the insanity of Hitler and his regime, leaving their morality and their souls in the dust of Nazi atrocities.
When Norman Jewison accepted the Academy Award for Oswald Morris' cinematography on Fiddler on the Roof, he closed his speech by saying something like, "And yes, Oswald did shoot this film through a silk stocking." That same gauzy softness fills Good's AVC encoded 1080p image (in 2.34:1) with diffuse light and a rather oddly lyrical looking image, perhaps done intentionally to make an ironic statement about the horrors being depicted. That softness may put off some viewers who want pristine clarity in their hi-def releases, but there actually is decent detail here, despite the gauziness, and colors especially are often resplendent and beautifully saturated. Contrast isn't extremely well defined, another aspect of the softness issue, and so some of the darker interior scenes lack sufficient fine detail. Black levels are pretty inconsistent as well, leeching over into milky territory more than a few times.
Good is almost all small, intimate dialogue scenes, so don't expect a wealth of bombast from its lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. There are several moments of really excellent, intense surround activity, notably the horrifying Kristallnacht sequence, where smashing windows, screams of terror and the flicker of flames cavort around the surround channels in a danse macabre. Fidelity here is excellent, and the many snippets of Mahler music prick at the edges of the subconcious like some bad aural nightmare. Dialogue is crisp and clear, and there's some surprising dynamic range here, with occasional, but very effective LFE (listen for the great "whoomp" when an old flash camera is used to take Halder's picture). This isn't a showy track to be sure, but it gets the job done quite well.
Aside from the theatrical trailer, two fairly long SD featurettes are included, Interviews (59:39), which feature the stars talking about the project (with interstitials describing what they're talking about, perhaps put there for release to television stations for PR), and a Behind the Scenes (29:43), which shows some sequences being filmed.
Good could have use a little more fleshing out to make its central thesis even more cogent and compelling. As it stands, it's still a thought provoking and very disturbing look at one man's descent into moral turpitude, despite his better angels knowing otherwise. Mortensen has never been better, in a completely unusual role for the actor. Recommended.
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