5.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
The film follows a rogue police officer who tries to right the wrongs of his past by seeking revenge against the men responsible for a string of attacks on the young women working at a local strip club.
Starring: Stephen Dorff, Walton Goggins, James Woods, Tommy Flanagan, Dominic PurcellCrime | 100% |
Drama | 61% |
Action | 58% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
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!
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 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.
This Blu-ray release of Officer Down contains no supplemental content.
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.
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