Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Sea of Love Blu-ray Movie Review

Pacino's big comeback film hasn't aged particularly well.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 3, 2012

Answering personal ads is not for the faint of heart. I know from good experience. The first time I answered an ad, I ended up going to an Ella Fitzgerald concert with a woman who, just as we were entering the theater, decided to confide in me that she had just been released from a mental institution (I swear I am not making this up). As I’ve joked for years afterwards, somewhere between “A tisket” and “a tasket” (Ella’s iconic opening number), this woman once again went off the deep end and descended into hysterical fits of weeping. Needless to say, the rest of the audience surrounding us was not amused, and I was frankly so flustered I really didn’t know what to do. I got the woman back out into the lobby, told her I didn’t think this was going to work out, and made my way out into the open air. (It may not have been gallant, but I was more than a little freaked out.) It took me several years to once again work up the courage to answer a personal ad, though by this time at least they had added the extra benefit of being able to call and listen to the woman you were interested, and I instantly fell in love with the ad placer’s sonorous voice. (It turned out later that this woman was one of Portland's top rated radio news anchors, one whose voice was known and loved by literally thousands of listeners.) We went out on a date, and I’m happy to relate we’ve now been married for close to twenty years and have two beautiful children to boot. Now some of you cynics may say that the second ad actually turned out much more tragically than the first, but one way or the other, the disparate outcomes I personally experience should be ample proof (as if any were needed) of just how dangerous answering personal ads can be. That’s part and parcel of the plot of Sea of Love, a kind of turgid melodramatic thriller from 1989 that nonetheless has developed a certain cachet over the years and was at the time of its release the first outright hit film that star Al Pacino had appeared in for several years.

Frank Keller (Al Pacino) is a mess. He’s wrestling with issues that some might term a “middle aged crisis”, questioning what (if anything) he’s really accomplished in a decades’ long career as a New York City police detective. Adding to Frank’s misery is the fact that he drinks too much, something which he uses to numb his feelings since his ex-wife dumped him and ended up marrying one of his co-workers. Perhaps without really knowing why it interests him, Frank ends up investigating a recent murder where a man was found shot in his bed. If the man wasn’t quite in flagrante delicto, it’s obvious he was involved in some sort of romantic tryst, and when a second murder victim is found in more or less the same circumstances, Frank and his new partner Sherman (John Goodman), who had been investigating the second victim, discover that both men had placed rhyming ads in a personals column. Could the woman who answered their ads be the same, and could she also perhaps be a serial killer?

Now if you were a cop (stressed out or otherwise) and were confronted with two people who had been killed after having placed rhyming personal ads, what would your first move be? It seems obvious that Frank and Sherman should place their own (obviously fake) ad in an attempt to bait the killer, especially since Frank has gotten a set of fingerprints from the first crime scene. But in one of at least a couple of weird tangents that Sea of Love goes off on really for no good reason, that patently obvious approach is delayed, at last for a little while, so that Frank and Sherman can waste a little time investigating a third man who has placed a rhyming ad, but who is still among the living. (Guess how long that lasts.)

Ultimately, though, Frank and Sherman set up a sting after having placed their own rhyming ad, with Frank acting as potential date and Sherman as a waiter at the restaurant where the meeting place is. The plan is for Sherman to take the potential killer’s glass away after she’s touched it, in order to gain fingerprints and see if they match the ones on file. Frank goes through one or two women until Helen (Ellen Barkin) shows up. Unfortunately it’s not exactly love at first sight (and/or sting) and Helen hightails it out of there before any fingerprints can be taken. That then sets up the central conceit of the film where we’re left to wonder if indeed Helen is the Black Widow killing men by responding to their personal ads and then shooting them in very hot blood. Of course it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or graduate from Screenwriting 101 to figure out that Frank will not only bump into Helen soon after their restaurant encounter, but go on to fall in love with her, thereby compromising his ability to objectively pursue her as a potential murder suspect.

Looking back on Sea of Love now from the vantage point of some twenty-plus years, it must be admitted that the film shows its seams and is in fact kind of tired in a number of its plot mechanics. What saves the film, and in fact elevates it at least somewhat above countless other of these “is she or isn’t she?” murder mysteries is Pacino’s world weary take on Frank. Pacino even in his early years had a sort of doleful eyed, sad sack quality to his demeanor, and that only increased as he grew older. His Frank is a man almost defeated but hanging on by his fingernails, and finding in Helen a chance to hope for something better. Pacino’s nicely nuanced performance is the glue that holds Sea of Love together (although Goodman is quite good as well as his partner).

Matching Pacino is Barkin, who has an almost feral presence in this film. She’s seductive, but she’s also more than a little bit scary, which plays very well into the central mystery of whether or not she’s a serial killer. Barkin’s career never really seemed to explode the way some were predicting when Sea of Love came out, but looking at her performance now it’s hard not to be impressed by her focus and ferocity. But truthfully there are just not many surprises in the film, even cutting it some slack for having come from 1989, when at least some of these hoary clichés hadn’t been quite so worked over as they are now (though even then films like Jagged Edge were mining much the same territory).

Sea of Love Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sea of Love is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Sea of Love was released on HD-DVD and my hunch is this is the same transfer that was utilized for that release (if anyone has definitive information, please pass it on and I'll include it in the review). This is a pretty drab looking high definition presentation, one not helped at all by the fact that this film is so relentlessly dark, as is shown quite clearly in the screencaps included in this review. Contrast is often low, resulting in a lack of fine object detail and pretty muddy shadow detail, with outright crush in several key sequences (it's kind of funny early in the film when Harold Becker's commentary mentions "seeing Pacino walk home" and we can barely even make him out in the nighttime gloom). Flesh tones are slightly ruddy or even orange but the rest of the film tends to not exploit the kind of color scheme that would help this presentation really pop. The good news is the film looks at least marginally better in motion than these screencaps might indicate, and for those who feel Universal is genetically incapable of not smearing catalog releases with DNR, there's a perhaps unexpected element to this presentation: actual film grain!

Sea of Love Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sea of Love's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is fine as far as it goes, but the problem is, it just never goes very far. While there is occasional surround activity from the hubbub of city streets to even the crowd noises in the film's early sting operation, there's nothing here that really impresses, and the entire mix is consistently front heavy without much zing or discrete channelization to recommend it. Still, fidelity is top notch, and Trevor Jones' sax soaked proto-noir score sounds fantastic. Dialogue is clear and clean as well.

Sea of Love Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (SD; 6:10). There's a handful of short snippets here (in 1.33:1), with some extra beats for Pacino and Goodman.


• The Creation of Sea of Love (SD; 14:28) is a nice background piece featuring interviews with Producer Martin Bregman and Director Harold Brecker (who actually wasn't the first director attached to the project), who discuss various aspects of the production.


• Feature Commentary by Director Harold Becker. This is a really good, informative commentary that goes into any number of aspects of the production, from what Pacino is like to work with to pointing out a cameo by a very young Samuel L. Jackson.


• Theatrical Trailer (SD; 1:33)

Sea of Love Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As a mystery, Sea of Love isn't especially surprising, though it's well done and well structured. What sets this film at least marginally above the rest of its kin is the fine pairing of Pacino and Barkin, both of whom do great work. This is still a film that has a perhaps over-inflated reputation, one that resulted from its immense box office at a time Pacino hadn't had a hit film in years. Looking back on it now, it seems awfully predictable and not nearly as innovative as it might have in 1989. This Blu-ray offers pretty uninspiring image quality, something that has evidently hampered previous home video releases, and its audio quality, while better, isn't spectacular either. The supplements are kind of middling, with the Becker commentary the best thing in that package. Fans of the film may—may—want to check this out, but only with expectations properly lowered.