6.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
An ex-convict and his brother are forced on the run by a vengeful criminal.
Starring: Myles Truitt, Jack Reynor, Dennis Quaid, Zoë Kravitz, James FrancoAction | 100% |
Sci-Fi | 65% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS:X
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (224 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
In what may be one of the more peculiar “mash ups” in recent cinematic history, Kin attempts to be both a portrait of a young inner city youth struggling with family problems and a science fiction “spectacular” featuring what appears to be a high tech alien weapon somewhat mysteriously left in an abandoned warehouse. Elijah Solinski (Myles Truitt) is a young African American kid living in the almost wartorn looking urban environment of Detroit with his widowed adoptive father Hal (Dennis Quaid). Eli has been getting into increasing trouble at school, including fistfighting bullies who have the temerity to mention his deceased mother. Hal, a hard working construction company owner, simply doesn’t have time to “helicopter parent” his errant son, though he attempts to pass along whatever wisdom he can, including the breaking news that “life is hard”. Hal does express some concern, though, that Eli needs to be careful of older brother Jimmy (Jack Reynor), a convict with a long and troubled history who has just been released from prison. Jimmy is coming back home for a few days until he can get his act together and move on to a life outside of stir. Meanwhile, it’s shown that Eli is a bit of an entrepreneur, traveling on his bike to various rundown and supposedly empty buildings where he harvests things like copper cable to sell to a local junkyard. In one of those “business trips”, Eli wanders into some horrifying carnage, where a bunch of helmeted victims lie dead in a warehouse, one with a weirdly glowing gun like object next to him (it?). Eli is transfixed, but when the “corpse” suddenly jerks in true horror film fashion, Eli hightails it out of the place in a big hurry. Running parallel to these developments is an ultimately interlinked subplot involving Jimmy’s debt to local crime lord Taylor Balik (James Franco), which perhaps predictably leads to calamity. Eli has since returned to the warehouse, where all the bodies have disappeared, but where he finds the alien weapon and begins to futz around with it, giving him an immediate sense of power that he has probably lacked for any number of reasons. Also probably predictably, the aforementioned calamity sends Jimmy and Eli on the lam, with Eli’s new “find” accompanying the duo, waiting to be put to good use.
Kin is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists Arri Alexa cameras as having digitally captured the imagery, with everything being finished at a 2K DI. Though shot digitally, the Bakers and cinematographer Larkin Sieple have toyed with things in post to achieve a somewhat grittier, more traditionally filmic look, with results that can look fairly mottled at times (look at screenshot 19, especially the sky). That said, detail levels are routinely quite high throughout this presentation, though a surplus of dark sequences can tend to mask things on occasion (several long scenes take place in the nearly blacked out warehouse where Eli finds the gun, and there are a lot of dimly lit or kind of weirdly lit scenes later in the film, including the club scene that introduces Milly). The film has some rather artful if intermittent special effects, many of which were achieved practically, or at least partially practically. The interweaving of the practical and digital effects is typically well done, though those wanting a nonstop array of whiz bang visual effects will probably find this film disappointing on that level. A few "arty" shots can look fairly soft and ill defined (see screenshot 18), but on the whole this is a sharp and well defined looking presentation which should please the film's fans.
Kin's DTS:X track is quite impressive, though rather like the film's "on again, off again" presentation of visual effects, the audio presentation here has moments of almost overpowering energy interspersed with quieter, more dialogue driven, moments. Though never really clearly "explained", there are huge washes of a kind of thundering sound that combines overhead washes with some rumbly LFE in the opening warehouse scenes which I assume is meant to hint at aliens arriving. Later scenes, including several moments when Eli is forced to use his new "toy", also offer some really impressive panning effects and clear overhead placement of things like explosions and/or gunfire. A couple of kind of tangential moments, as in one scene where Eli learns to make "donuts" with a truck, also offer some nicely immersive surround activity. The film has a rather interesting score by Mogwai which makes excellent use of the surround channels. Dialogue is routinely delivered cleanly and clearly on this problem free track.
Kin may simply be too much of a sui generis offering to appeal to either "kitchen sink" drama fans or science fiction aficionados, but the mere fact that those two demographics are being mentioned in the same breath may point out how unusual the Baker brothers' approach here is. Not all of this film worked for me, and in fact I found quite a bit of its underlying morality on the decidedly dubious side, but there is a really interesting "combo platter" here that may appeal to a particular niche of the viewing public that is the perhaps small intersection on the Venn Diagram of those two "populations" mentioned above. Technical merits (especially audio) are first rate, and Kin comes Recommended.
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