7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A newly released prison gangster is forced by the leaders of his gang to orchestrate a major crime with a brutal rival gang on the streets of Southern California.
Starring: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lake Bell, Jon Bernthal, Omari Hardwick, Jeffrey DonovanDrama | 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
English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Though it’s largely forgotten today, in early 1972 a made for television movie which was on my radar because it had been shot in my then hometown of Salt Lake City was broadcast which created quite a critical furor, ultimately going on to receive a trio of Emmy nominations, including a win for director Tom Gries. The Glass House was based on a story by Truman Capote, and relayed the harrowing tale of an upper middle class college professor (Alan Alda, just a few months before he became a bonafide television star in M*A*S*H) who is convicted of manslaughter and who is sent to the slammer, being pretty spectacularly unprepared for the horrors which awaited him in the institutional life of a “modern” American prison. The Glass House has recurred kind of oddly throughout my life. I was a kid when it was shot in and around Salt Lake City (the prison itself is in Draper, somewhat south of Salt Lake), but for some reason the producers invited a lot of VIPs, among them my father, out to the Utah State Penitentiary (where Gary Gilmore was famously executed by a firing squad after The Glass House was produced) to see the filming and hobnob with the cast and crew. My Dad was completely unimpressed with the proceedings but dutifully reported everything he had seen and everyone he had met to his starry eyed son. Years later I weirdly ended up winning an eBay auction held by actor Kristoffer Tabori, who was a co-star in the film, which brought memories of this childhood event back to life. Now even more decades later, The Glass House rose from the dim mists of my memory again as I watched Shot Caller, since it deals with at least some of the same ideas and even some character “evolutions”, though I have to say as fascinating as the film often is, it’s perhaps too farfetched to resonate as strongly as The Glass House did for many back in the seventies. Shot Caller is, like The Glass House, built around the conceit of an upwardly mobile male, in this case Jacob Harlon (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who is convicted of involuntary manslaughter after he imbibes a few too many drinks and ends up in a fiery car crash that kills his best friend. Structurally, the film is quite interesting, beginning with scenes of Harlon, who has taken the nickname Money in stir, as a hardscrabble prisoner covered with tattoos and writing a note to his son. This introduction to Harlon (and/or Money, as the case may be) is intentionally misleading, since most audience members are going to assume they’re dealing with a “lowlife” who is probably a gang member and who deserves whatever fate he’s been handed. That disconnect between audience perception and “reality” may well be the most interesting thing about Shot Caller, a film that may simply be too outlandish for its own good, despite some really impressive performances from a large cast that also includes Lake Bell as Harlon’s ex-wife and Benjamin Bratt as Sheriff Sanchez, a lawman whose life intersects with Harlon’s (interestingly, The Glass House also profiled a guard who was, like Alda’s character, a newcomer to the prison).
Shot Caller is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Shot with a variety of digital cameras (according to the IMDb), this is a generally great looking transfer, one that offers excellent levels of fine detail even in some fairly dim situations. Director Ric Roman Waugh and cinematographer Dana Gonzales often favor extreme close-ups of faces, as can be seen in several of the screenshots accompanying this review, an approach that supports nice fine detail levels. There are a few passing shots in the darkest bowels of the pen where detail levels may falter a bit (see screenshot 8), but overall the palette is robust and natural looking (aside from some brief grading choices).
Some coming to Shot Caller expecting more of a traditional action adventure outing or even a thriller may be slightly disappointed with the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, since it doesn't offer a glut of elements like things going bang and the like. Instead, there's a really nice and quite nuanced accounting of the "industrial hum" (as the commentary terms it) of the prison setting, as well as more raucous moments like skirmishes that break out in the prison yard from time to time. Surround activity may be subtle at times, but it's generally fairly consistent, placing quite a few ambient environmental effects around the side and rear channels. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly on this problem free track.
For me personally Shot Caller was a near miss. A lot about this film is very impressive, but I just couldn't quite get past my incredulity over the transformation experienced by this one upstanding member of society. Yes, it's probably decently "explained", ultimately at least, that is, if you buy the fact that the explanation is attempting to rationalize what is by any measure a pretty startling metamorphosis. Performances are very strong and technical merits are excellent. Recommended.
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