5.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 1.0 | |
Overall | 1.0 |
An L.A. detective seeks out the ruthless gang that stole his dog.
Starring: Bruce Willis, Jason Momoa, Elisabeth Röhm, Famke Janssen, Adam GoldbergComedy | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English SDH, Spanish SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 0.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 1.0 |
RLJ Entertainment acquired Once Upon a Time in Venice after it sat unreleased for a year—and they should have left it on the shelf. The film is nominally the feature directing debut of screenwriter Mark Cullen, but it's also a vanity project for Bruce Willis, whose career is pockmarked by similarly vapid efforts at self-indulgent comedy, including the Cullen-scripted Cop Out. That misguided parody of buddy cop films at least had the benefit of direction by Kevin Smith, who knows his way around genre caricature, but Cullen doesn't have Smith's experience or savvy, and he indulges Willis' ditsiest instincts. (Either that, or Willis strong-armed his director into doing whatever he wanted, as he reportedly did twenty-five years earlier with Michael Lehmann on Hudson Hawk.) Sloppy, confusing and overpopulated with under-developed characters, Venice is mirth-free from beginning to end.
Once Upon a Time in Venice was shot on the Arri Alexa by cinematographer Amir Mokri, who photographed Man of Steel for Zack Snyder and several films for Michael Bay. RLJ Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is a competent affair that reflects all the usual advantages of digital capture, with superior sharpness and detail and a lack of noise, interference or other artifacts. Night scenes feature solid blacks, and the daytime palette reflects the riotous kaleidoscope of sun-drenched colors for which Venice and its beachfront are famous. RLJ has squeezed the film onto a BD-25 on which several gigabytes of space have been left empty, driving the average bitrate down to 19.99. The encode appears to be capable.
Venice's 5.1 track, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, isn't a fancy affair, but it provides a nice sense of the environment through the surrounds, and the dynamic range supplies the requisite impact for gunfire, vehicular impacts and body blows, all of which are rendered with the realism of a live-action cartoon. The score by Jeff Cardoni (Silicon Valley) repeatedly invokes Pulp Fiction by echoing its signature tune, "Misirlou", but the reference only serves to underscore the ineptitude with which Venice attempts to tell similarly overlapping stories about oddball criminals and losers.
If you're going to use a film title that invokes Sergio Leone, you'd better be prepared to live up to
the reference. Robert Rodriguez didn't succeed with the third chapter in his mariachi trilogy
(Once Upon a Time in Mexico), but
at least he tried. Willis and the Cullen Brothers are just
slumming. Not even worth renting.
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