6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A New York City police sergeant, whose hunger for sex and money prompts him to cheat on his wife and accept payoffs from the mob, meets his match when he becomes involved with the devious female scion of a Moscow crime family.
Starring: Gary Oldman, Lena Olin, Annabella Sciorra, Juliette Lewis, Roy ScheiderThriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Music: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
The films of Peter Medak are an interesting aggregation, to say the least. There’s the “Jesus Christ meets Jack the Ripper” exercise The Ruling Class, the fascinating character study of parents dealing with a severely disabled child A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, and Zorro, the Gay Blade, a comedic riff on a sword wielding vigilante, to name but three. Medak is often an intentional provocateur, and that proclivity is probably nowhere more obvious than in his neo-noir Romeo is Bleeding, a film which pushes all sorts of envelopes and which contains some viscerally discomfiting sequences but which probably fails to really deliver its aimed for death blow, despite the fact that lots of demises accrue over the course of its typically twisting and winding tale. One of the unabashed pleasures of the film (if a film like Romeo is Bleeding can even be described as offering “pleasures”) is its cast, a rather amazing group of performers which includes Gary Oldman, Lena Olin, Annabella Sciorra, Juliette Lewis and Roy Scheider. That said, however, one of the stumbling blocks that Romeo is Bleeding encounters is that Oldman’s character, New York cop Jack Grimaldi, is not a basically decent guy led to his doom by the seductive wiles of a femme fatale. Jack is a heel, plain and simple, a morally bankrupt guy who cheats on his wife Natalie (Annabella Sciorra) with a dimwitted waitress named Sheri (Juliette Lewis), while moonlighting for local mob boss Don Falcone (Roy Scheider). That means that the trajectory for Jack begins at the bottom and then only goes lower, something that tends to make a lot of Romeo is Bleeding play like a swampy morass of decrepitude.
Romeo is Bleeding is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is by and large a nice looking transfer from the MGM catalog, at least in terms of densities, grain structure and the overall healthiness of the palette. I'd in fact be inclined to score this closer to 4.0 if it were not for some prevalent, and at times pretty major, vertical wobble. You'll notice it right off the bat in the credits sequence, where the text bobs up and down pretty dramatically, a tendency which continues through that initial sequence (which I'm assuming is part of the optically printed titles despite the lack of actual credits after a second or two), but if you keep your eyes peeled throughout the rest of the presentation, you will clearly see the wobble, especially when the camera is stationary. Medak and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski favor a peripatetic camera, something which tends to help since when the camera tracks or dollies it becomes a bit more difficult to see the wobble. That particular issue aside, a lot of the rest of this presentation is very commendable, with some great fine detail (notice the ribbing on the photograph album pages in screenshot 6 or the mottled wall behind Oldman in screenshot 16).
Romeo is Bleeding features a nice sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track which fully supports some gorgeous trumpet playing by the always evocative Mark Isham, as well as dialogue and the occasionally goofy sound effects (courtesy of some lurid sex and/or action sequences). Fidelity is fine, with no problematic distortion, dropouts or other damage to report.
This is another recent Twilight Time release like Inserts where I can't out and out recommend the film due to some inherent deficiencies in delivery, even while I have to confess I've always found the film weirdly entrancing in its own completely peculiar way. Olin is an eyeful in the film, and those who get their kicks watching titillating sex scenes may find this a bit of an "event", so to speak. I'd jokingly encourage fans to take a little Dramamine before watching due to the wobble issues discussed in the video section of the review, but otherwise technical merits are strong for those considering a purchase.
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The Sound of Fury
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