Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Officer Down Blu-ray Movie Review

...but not out.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman January 5, 2013

I just don't know why I got a second chance.

Director Brian A. Miller's (House of the Rising Sun) latest film is Officer Down, a picture that treads terribly familiar territory but through great strength of will -- largely through a very good cast -- bumps up slightly past the average Cop Drama but otherwise finds little novelty or purpose beyond decent time-killing entertainment. Officer Down chucks originality out the window in favor of a safe, paint-by-numbers "good cop/bad cop" (here both the same man) routine with all the obligatory twists and turns that keep audiences and, by the looks of it, even the cast sometimes not only guessing, but trying to keep the film's excessively curvy path as straight as possible. The film never does quite add up until the very end, so frequent are the flashbacks, so disjointed is the structure, so deep the proverbial rabbit hole in the film goes. Fortunately, there's enough character intrigue and good acting to make basic enough sense of it on-the-fly, enough to allow audiences to enjoy the ride, a ride defined more by mental acrobatics rather than visual and aural hijinks.

Guns and alcohol don't mix...unless you're a COP ON THE EDGE!

Detective David Callahan (Stephen Dorff) is a Bridgeport, Connecticut cop recovering from a significant gunshot injury received while in the line of duty in a drug deal gone bad. The catch: he was at the time of the shooting engaged in extracurricular and unlawful activities while in cahoots with a dirty strip club operator. Since the shooting, he's sobered up and sworn off the local strip joint, trying to reconstruct his life with his wife Alexandra (Elisabeth Röhm) and teenage daughter Lanie (Beatrice Miller). He's also been in search of the "good samaritan" who helped save his life after he was shot. One day, he's approached by a man who claims to be that samaritan. Sergei (Zoran Radanovich) turns over a journal to Callahan that describes in some detail one young girl's efforts to escape the life she's cut out for herself as a stripper at Callahan's old watering hole/sex parlor. His investigation leads him to tail a man known as "The Angel" (Walton Goggins) who may be targeting young women. As Callahan falls deeper into a dark world and unforgiving territory, he comes to learn several hard truths about his past and comes face-to-face with an unspeakable destiny.

Officer Down doesn't shy away from swapping timelines and discombobulating its audience with a fairly involved storyline, but the reward is a slightly smarter-than-normal picture that emphasizes characterization over action, admirable even considering that the general lead character angle has been done to death. The old "cop on the edge" or "cop in search of redemption" story lines are the driving force here; the picture is littered with cliché but navigates a minefield of potential troubles with relative ease thanks to both steady direction and a quality cast. The film's somewhat disorienting structure, timeline swapping, structural uncertainty, and general plot confusion don't help alleviate the blandness of its rather general story outline, but the film nevertheless takes old material and injects it with a certain freshness brought upon largely by a good cast that generally falls into part and makes the most of a movie with a lot of unoriginality but not an excess of story tedium.

Stephen Dorff falls into the role of "beleaguered cop" very well. He gets the look and the attitude right, but he also believably wrestles with some of his character's inward demons that help drive his Callahan and give greater shape to the plot as he advances further down that hole that's largely of his own making. Dorff's ability to navigate that darkness both outwardly and, more important, inwardly, is the film's greatest asset. The veteran actor largely saves the movie by tackling the material sincerely, playing a scarred individual who carries his wounds both on his body and in his soul, showing the signs of the former but suffering through the opening of the latter in the name of getting things right the second time around. The supporting cast is quite good, too; the picture is packed with several familiar and big names, including Justified's Walter Goggins who looks as if he just walked off that show's set but plays the film's central mystery character brilliantly, never betraying the surprises that await audiences in the film's final act.

Officer Down Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Officer Down winds up on Blu-ray with a perfectly acceptable, but hardly memorable or unique, high definition transfer. This is largely a typical sort of HD video-sourced, low-to-moderately budgeted movie sort of transfer. At times it shows a slightly washed out palette where blacks can go a bit bright and even gently purple. The HD video source lends the image a rather smooth sort of appearance. However, the flip side is some seriously gorgeous, steady, and very sharp details, notably in the brightest scenes. Complex facial and clothing intricacies are handled marvelously in many places. Colors, aside from some of those abnormally bright segments, offer good, natural balance cross various locations and objects. Flesh tones satisfy in shading. Black and white imagery -- sometimes with a bit of color -- is handled well, remaining sharp and detailed and HD video flat. There are certainly a few trouble spots that seem largely a result of lower end video equipment rather than a fault of the transfer, but the net result is a positive image that gets by without too many areas for concern.

Officer Down Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Officer Down features a steady Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. It delivers natural musical elements, playing them evenly and with commendable clarity across the front. Light ambient elements gently pull the listener into various scenes and the places depicted therein; whether office ambience or excited children outside a school, several locations present listeners with fun little sonic highlights that considerably liven up the track. There's some smooth surround and directional movement effects in a voiceover diary reading in chapter three, providing the single most active non-shooting scene in the film. Gunplay is handled well enough; shots ring out with some aggressive power and bullet impacts on various surfaces hit sufficiently hard. Bass is heavy but balanced and makes for a good support element to give body and weight to various moments. Dialogue plays clearly and smoothly through the center channel. All in all, this is a good, well-rounded track that serves the movie well.

Officer Down Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Officer Down contains no supplemental content.

Officer Down Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Officer Down doesn't blaze a bold new path for the weary Cop Drama, but it handles old and reliable elements admirably, creating a complex -- and sometimes unnecessarily so -- tale of the classic "bad cop with a second chance" that works the mind rather than simply litter the screen with bullets. The script could have benefited from a rewrite to tighten things up, give the plot a little more dramatic heft, and straighten out some of the more confusing elements, but overall this is a quality picture that genre fans will want to absorb. Anchor Bay's Blu-ray release of Officer Down contains no extra content but does offer solid video and audio. Give it a rent.