Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Love Ranch Blu-ray Movie Review

What's that they say about leading a "horticulture"?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 4, 2010

Taylor Hackford and Helen Mirren seem to be one of the rare Hollywood (at least some of the time) star couples who have managed to make it work. The two met on the set of Hackford’s 1985 film White Nights and were soon co-habitating, though they didn’t officially marry until 1997. Why the two never collaborated regularly after White Nights is a good question. A better question is why they would choose to break their non-collaborative spell with a weird film like Love Ranch. Loosely based on the real history of Nevada’s first legalized brothel, the infamous Mustang Ranch, Love Ranch seems to want to purposefully jettison just about everything about this story which could generate substantial interest, while focusing on the tawdry, soap operatic story of the decline of the marriage between the Ranch’s owners, Grace (Mirren) and Charlie Bontempo (Joe Pesci). The history of legalized prostitution is a subject rife with possibilities. The personal stories of the girls involved in the world’s oldest profession would certainly make a compelling film. Even the Love Story-esque ode to a couple’s relationship doomed by a fatal disease obviously has its heartstring pulling interest. But Love Ranch wants a little this-a and a little that-a, never really deciding what it’s really about. Though it’s anchored by yet another tour de force performance by Mirren (even if her American accent is a little shaky at times), Hackford seems to be considerably off his top game here, meandering through a murky story that has both too much and too little to generate sufficient impact.

Hackford has had one of the more curiously spotty directorial careers in recent Hollywood history. When he’s up, he’s up big time, with superlative films like Ray and even An Officer and a Gentleman. Too often, though, his films are mired in a sort of middling mediocrity, often with very good performances (Dolores Claiborne, Proof of Life) which can’t quite overcome the faults of inadequate screenplays or, indeed, missteps by Hackford himself. That same anomaly seems to plague Love Ranch, a film which seemingly has everything going for it—sensational subject matter, intriguing cast—but which simply fails to connect the dots for a riveting final product.

Those of us guys who grew up in the West and Southwest, especially if we were close to Nevada, were only too aware that a few hours drive across the desert could provide us with legalized sex. In fact I personally knew a couple of guys who had been given high school graduation “presents” to the Mustang and other houses of ill repute. Of course the reality is usually a far cry from the fantasy, and the gritty, grimy and just plain unseemly atmosphere of a “professional” brothel is at least hinted at in Love Ranch, along with the dysfunctional family aspect of, in Grace’s inimitable characterization, a “bunch of psychotic whores.” But the personal angst and perhaps even humiliation suffered by these working girls is really only hinted at in Mark Jacobson’s screenplay, and indeed the scenarist seems more interested in almost Russ Meyer-esque catfights than he does in exploring the ins and outs (so to speak) of what this line of work does to its participants. But there are hints here, some of them well realized, like Pesci's Charlie surveying his domain from what looks exactly like a prisoner of war guard tower. In fact the entire Ranch is surrounded by fences and gates, making it seem more like a prison than a brothel.

But these moments of interesting analogies are unfortunately too few and far between. Instead Love Ranch is a turgid melodrama focusing on the slow dissolution of Grace and Charlie’s marriage, one which has been eroded by years of Charlie’s indiscretions and which is finally pushed close to the teetering edge by Grace’s desperate hook up with a pro fighter, Armando (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), whom Charlie has optioned, bringing him to the Ranch for training. Since Charlie is a convicted felon, he can’t legally be Armando’s manager, and so he enlists an initially unwilling Grace to pretend to fulfill that role, though she soon finds herself emotionally entangled with the hulking young man.

It’s perhaps indicative of this film’s fractured nature that Hackford finally really gains some dramatic, and directorial and editing, traction in a boxing sequence about two thirds of the way through the film. While Grace’s and Charlie’s reactions are perhaps cliché-ridden, Hackford mounts the fight with considerable panache, and the denouement contains one of the few rousing moments in the entire film. Hackford also finds some picturesque locales, including a scenic snowy sequence set in Donner Pass.

Mirren has always been a performer of unique elegance and poise, even when she’s playing hardscrabble characters like Grace. If she’s just slightly ill at ease in this portrayal, she doesn’t let the seams show too thoroughly. Pesci came out of semi-retirement to play this role and while he’s suitably repugnant, there’s so little humanity in Charlie that it’s hard to see what Grace could have ever found desirable in him. The supporting cast has a number of nice turns, including Gina Gershon as one of the working girls and a brief cameo by Bryan Cranston as a smarmy state senator on the take. Peris-Mencheta is so over the top it’s hard to take at times, especially when contrasted with Mirren’s more sedate approach.

This is a film that really should have been much better than it is. Most of the fault lies with the screenplay, which lurches from subject to subject without ever fully developing any of them. Love Ranch could have been a gritty little indie film about the burgeoning of legalized prostitution in Nevada. Instead, with a director like Hackford, and a star like Mirren, a glossy Hollywood approach was taken, despite the foul language and unseemly characters, and it is a decidedly odd fit. This might be the filmic equivalent of the classic Dorothy Parker line about ‘horticulture’—“you can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think”. Love Ranch, despite the stellar presence of Mirren, is, like Nevada itself, a desert wasteland.

Love Ranch Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Love Ranch hustles its way onto Blu-ray with an oddly inconsistent looking AVC encoded transfer in 1080p and 1.78:1. This transfer really comes alive in several establishing shot of the Nevada desert and Sierra Nevada mountains, as well as a lot of the outdoor segments, which reveal excellent fine detail (wow, has Pesci's face weathered over the years!). Contrast and saturation are also excellent in these exterior shots. The dusty, dirty environment, baked in saffron yellow and burnt brown tones, is well rendered here, with the blowing dirt never devolving into digital noise territory. The interior scenes are somewhat more problematic. There's nothing really wrong here, there's just not anything exceptional. Sharpness is OK, detail is OK, colors are OK. But nothing really pops the way it should in a stellar Blu-ray release. Instead we get a sort of quasi-upconverted look that is soft with low contrast. But when this film ventures out of doors, which it does quite a bit, there's a lot of crisp and detailed image to take in.

Love Ranch Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Other than some of the circa 1970s source cues, and the exciting fight sequence, there's not a heck of a lot of opportunity for Love Ranch's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix to really flaunt its sonic wares. Instead we get a pretty down and dirty intimate dialogue driven piece, and the 5.1 track certainly provides excellent fidelity and good separation. Surround channels tend to kick in with expected things like cars pulling in and the occasional crowd scene (the opening segment, a New Year's Eve party, does have some very nice immersion). But there's a noticeable uptick in immersion in that fight scene which suddenly electrifies the film about two thirds of the way through. Unfortunately, once that's done, we're back to a lot more dialogue. One blast of a gun does provide some good LFE toward the end of the film.

Love Ranch Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Love Ranch was obviously a project close to the heart of Hackford. In the Introduction by Taylor Hackford and Helen Mirren (HD; 8:28) he talks about the heartbreak of having to excise so much material. (It's also sweet to see Hackford and his wife, evidently in their own home talking to a minicam on a tripod, brush the hair out of her eyes). Those Deleted Scenes (HD; 56:54), with optional commentary, offer a wealth of added information that may have indeed made Love Ranch a more cohesive film. The deleted scenes are also available as the film plays via seamless branching by engaging the Heartbreak Mode. Hackford also contributes a Commentary but seems more intent on the film that he had envisioned rather than what actually ended up on the screen.

Love Ranch Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Love Ranch is a really interesting misfire. It's both too operatic for its own good, as well as annoyingly mundane in its treatment of its characters. There's such a great basis for a fascinating story here that it's surprising a better film didn't come of it. Still, Mirren is always a joy to watch, and Pesci chews the scenery with considerable gusto. The whole enterprise has the slight stench of degradation about it, probably suitable for the subject matter, but Mirren fans may well want to at least rent Love Ranch to see yet another fascinating portrayal by the iconic actress.