Scorched Earth Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Scorched Earth Blu-ray Movie Review

Mad Atticus.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 19, 2018

The end of the world, post-apocalyptic genre was exemplified in the bleak and barren The Road and recently revitalized in the riveting, action-packed Mad Max: Fury Road. Scorched Earth looks to capitalize on interest in the genre, bending in an environmental caution and bringing mixed martial artist and movie star Gina Carano in to lead the movie. It's an inconsequential little film, part Western and part end-times action vehicle. Its plot is a little muddled but nevertheless straightforward. It never commands the screen, but it has its essentials pretty much down pat, resulting in a watchable little waste of time that fails to excite but excites because it doesn't fail. It's a midrange direct-to-video flick with no ambition but a positive approach and enough structural density to carry the meager plot on through.

In the middle of the 21st century, the “Cloud Fall,” as it has come to be known, was a cataclysmic environmental catastrophe that spurred Biblical flooding that nearly destroyed the planet. The survivors, who waited out the floods on high ground, found an opportunity to start again. Half a century later, two things remain essential for survival: air and water, and just as important, means of purifying them. Air purification systems and silver, the latter necessary to filter water, are the world’s currency. Fossil fuels are now illegal, and bounty hunters roam the wasteland looking to cash in on rewards for people who drive vehicles that run on them, known as “Belchers.” Atticus Gage (Gina Carano) is one such bounty hunter and kills a ruthless warlord named Chavo (Luvia Petersen), whose teeth are the only things more rotten than her core. Gage disguises herself as Chavo and enters the domain of a criminal named Jackson (Ryan Robbins), in charge of a settlement called Defiance, in order to position herself to collect a rich bounty on his head. However, she finds herself in a much more dangerous and increasingly personal situation that could spell her doom.

Honestly, Scorched Earth will forever be an irrelevant movie. Its action isn't enough to sustain life, its acting is certainly nothing special, its environmental caution is likely to fall on deaf ears (and be drowned out by superior films, bigger films, and documentary films), and its setting is nothing new and neither is its depiction of it, which is admittedly fine under the filmmakers' constraints. Indeed, the movie looks the part, embracing the literal void of the tangible world and the figurative void of the humanity that has disappeared in a bleak, dim, hopeless world where only the finest clothes are not tattered, only the most sheltered faces are not weathered, and only the richest hands are not stained with blood but certainly awash in it. The wasteland world is a setting for a story that offers the viewer little reason to care. Bounty hunters track down people polluting an already ruined environment. People are still people, power vacuums have been filled by the meanest of the mean, and guns still operate under the same laws of physics. Characters are stock and the apocalypse-cum-western setting is nothing new but decently fun. The movie works well enough as it plays with its essential world-building toys, but beyond working as a passable time killer, it offers nothing of staying value.

Acting is wooden, but the script isn’t exactly Shakespeare, either, so it’s easy to excuse one while blaming the other. Carano, the lead, is the weak link. She carries her action scenes well enough and puts on a good look that’s part pretty, part powerful, but dramatic delivery is wanting. Again, though, the chicken and the egg. The film doesn’t escape its DTV roots, but it does appear to stretch a dollar fairly far. Costumes are pleasing, presenting a worn, rugged, ragged appearance, and sets appear a nice blend of old west with some broken down modern amenities. It’s also fairly interesting to see modern weapons -- a machine gun mounted on a vehicle, various makes and models of semiautomatic handguns -- being waved around in what is, texturally, as much an Old West setting as it is future cataclysm state. Mix in a few armored Mad Max vehicles and there are a lot of interesting ingredients but a fairly stale finished product.

Scorched Earth Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Scorched Earth features a slick, clear, clean digital image. It's very capable. Colors are a bit drab, not drained, by design. It's a very dull movie, with clothing made of shades of gray and black and brown. Environments are bleak as well with only splashes of support color, such as in a brothel in chapter three, standing apart. It's a very basic post-apocalyptic-inspired palette. Textural qualities are very enticing. The film's rugged set pieces and ragged clothes are both consistently revealing. Frayed corners, tattered seams, old woods, weathered faces, and the typically dusty and rustic Western-like locales offer sustained visual excellence that outpaces even the relatively smooth, glossy digital veneer. Nighttime black levels are impressively deep and refined. Skin tones appear ghastly and pale but fit in with the movie's general color scheme. Noise is mild and other issues like banding are essentially non-issues. For a lower budget shot-on-video flick with limited color by design, this is a pretty healthy and enjoyable 1080p presentation.

Scorched Earth Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Scorched Earth's dialogue is not always well prioritized. During the beginning narration, I had to turn on subtitles to learn that the event that destroyed the world was called "Cloud Fall;" it otherwise sounded garbled. In fact the track is frequently less than exacting with dialogue that sounds as if it's underwater or filtered in some way, there and again at the 54-minute mark. It's usually fine, and even naturally and nicely reverberates near film's end during a scene in a mine, but there are moments of frustration and fluctuation throughout. Otherwise, this DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is fairly good and enjoyable. Atmospherics are well defined, including some good saturating rain effects falling in the surround channels early in the film. Action scenes are stout, boasting stage-covering gunfire that springs from every speaker. Shots are pleasingly substantial, generally, whether pistol rounds, shotgun blasts, or the rat-a-tat of a vehicle-mounted machine gun that spits out during one of the film's biggest gunfights in chapter five. Music plays with solid depth and wide front-end engagement, as well as a capable low end accompaniment. All in all, this is not a bad track beyond the issues with dialogue.

Scorched Earth Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Scorched Earth contains no supplemental content. No DVD or digital copies are included, either, and for fans of such things, there is no slipcover, no inner print, nada. In 2018 it's nearly as bare-bones as a release can be.

Scorched Earth Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Scorched Earth doesn't amount to much. It's a passable post-apocalyptic Action film in the guise of a Western, a combination that's of modest novelty but seen elsewhere in films like The Book of Eli and The Dark Tower. Action is decent, story so-so, and acting is below par. It's a passable time waster, no more and no less. Cinedigm's Blu-ray delivers great video and pretty good audio outside of some problems with the dialogue. No extras are included. Worth a look on sale.