Sinners and Saints Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

Sinners and Saints Blu-ray Movie Review

As its title suggests, 'Sinners and Saints' tends to be both bad and good.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman January 10, 2012

You keep heading down a path this dark...you ain’t never gonna find your way back.

The "Edgy" and "Gritty" Cop movie is an old and even somewhat storied sub genre -- probably best defined by the amazing Training Day -- that allows for interestingly dark and complex characters on both sides of the law, raw action, and sometimes even deep thematic relevancy. Sinners and Saints has all of that, to varying degrees. Here's a movie that doesn't aim to be anything new or innovative, just bolder and more intense. It strives to "out-edge" the edgier Cop movies, even if that comes at the expense of basic moviemaking elements, like sound acting, well-choreographed action, and fuller-bodied characters, none of which are totally absent from Sinners and Saints, but that are sometimes missing here and there from the end product. Sinners and Saints is a rare movie that's ultra-frustrating but oddly alluring at the same time. The movie seems to fluctuate wildly throughout, sometimes looking like the next, great genre picture, while at other times it threatens to fall completely apart and devolve into nothing better than the average direct-to-video no-production-values Action flick. Technical merits range from strong to sloppy, the acting is a revolving door of quality, the action scenes are either invigorating or boring, and the pacing is either rapid or slow. Still, Sinners and Saints makes for an overall positive experience, a movie that just refuses to let go, no surprise in its better stretches but quite shocking when it looks feels like it was made on a dime and a prayer. Go figure.

Don't mess with the Riley.

Detective Sean Riley (Johnny Strong), mourning the loss of a son and struggling with a broken marriage, sees his partner gunned down during a violent bust gone terribly wrong. His world is literally coming down around him; his job as a New Orleans "Street Crime" cop puts him in some of the most dangerous situations imaginable, which can only harden an already heavily-scarred heart and mold him to nothing but a guns-blazing, shoot-first sort of guy. In an effort to lock him down, he's ordered by his Captain (Tom Berenger) to aid in the investigation of a string of extraordinarily grotesque crimes. A turf war has erupted in New Orleans, leaving a trail of badly burned or otherwise maliciously murdered victims in its wake. Riley pairs up with Detective Will Ganz (Kevin Phillips), a family man with everything to lose, not exactly the sort of man to pair with a loose canon like Riley -- or is he? As the two come closer to answers, Riley realizes that his longtime friend Colin (Sean Patrick Flanery) may be involved in the larger criminal picture, a picture in the center of which lies the vicious Raymond Crowe (Costas Mandylor), a man who will stop at nothing to keep a particular pice of incriminating evidence from falling into the wrong hands.

Sinners and Saints clearly lacks the technical polish of bigger-budget Action fare, which both hurts the movie and, in a roundabout way, helps it. The harm comes from an inescapable lower-quality feel that hangs over the movie; it's evident that this is not major production, but what the film lacks in polish it necessarily makes up for in effort, which is where most other films of this sort often truly fail. Whether it's going gangbusters or floundering under the pressures of various constraints, Sinners and Saints maintains a gritty, honest determination to do the best it can with whatever it has to work with. Nothing about the film says "great," but even when it wanders towards mediocrity -- or worse -- there's an evident undercurrent of energy that keeps it from falling apart. Whether dialogue is delivered crisply or sounds stilted, whether the action scenes are white-knuckle intense or sloppily edited, whether the script is tight or the pacing falls off a cliff, the movie never surrenders to its constraints and faults, instead seeming to just try harder in the next scene. That's far more admirable than most generic big budget, big studio ventures that throw a lot of advertising money and slick production values at a movie in hopes of masking what is just another bland no-effort moneymaker. Sinners and Saints won't win an Oscar, but if there was one for sheer effort, it would win hands-down.

Despite its problems, and considering the kind of fight it puts up, one can't help but to enjoy Sinners and Saints. It's a big, loud, and fun guy movie from the surface right down to its very core, no matter how smoothly or awkwardly the movie may play. The picture does a great job of clearly separating on-screen good from on-screen evil, and even if its main character struggles with the fine line between "right" and "wrong" -- he kills a wounded criminal in cold blood -- it's easy to cheer on the good guys and even easier to root for the terrible demise of the bad guys, effectively eliminating Riley's character depth, but not so much to the detriment of the end product. The crimes the bad guys commit are ultra-heinous, and the further they sink into depravity, the clearer the line between good and evil becomes. Once that is established -- and continues to evolve -- the movie never relents in its hard-hitting tenor. In fact, the film rarely becomes bogged down in procedural elements, but the story is never told all that tightly. It seems to meander here, and jump to another part there. That occasionally takes the viewer out of the movie, but as it's prone to do, Sinners and Saints keeps its audience through sheer effort alone. The cast is made of some familiar names in secondary roles. Costas Mandylor, Tom Berenger, Jürgen Prochnow, and Jolene Blalock inject the movie with some marquee credibility, though they all, save for Mandylor, mostly disappear into the greater whole. Johnny Strong sells the movie, playing the tough-minded and emotionally damaged Riley with a flair that's a cut above the average lower budget lead performance. He embraces the part, sells the character, and handles the action smoothly, crafting the part of a deadly, edgy detective with ease.

Sinners and Saints Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sinners and Saints' 1080p transfer reflects the picture's edgy stylings. This is a gritty, somewhat worn down, and occasionally uneven presentation that still looks rather good given its natural texture. The image is harsh and hot. Colors are explosive, they're often so hot. Flesh tones are often on fire, and the image has a bright, unnaturally warm overlay. Blacks are constantly deep, but occasionally crushing though never going gray. Fine detail is quite strong, though not immaculately so. Faces and clothes can sometimes look a little stale and flat, smeary and undefined, but some of the more worn-down and grimy set pieces offer up some nice, complex visuals. Grain is present throughout, aiding the movie's want for a more gritty appearance. Viewers will be hard pressed to spot excessive banding or blocking. All around, this is a solid transfer that's not pretty but that is nicely reflective of the film it accompanies.

Sinners and Saints Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sinners and Saints features a flat and disappointing Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Though music is nicely spaced across the front and offers suitable clarity, the movie is built around action, and it's there that the track comes up well short of expectations. Gunshots generally come across as downright puny and ineffective. They're not low in volume, but they offer no power or punch, instead sounding muddled and hollow. Likewise, the ringing of a flash-bang grenade is hardly piercing, and a large explosion in chapter eight seriously lacks oomph, even if bass, in other spots, tends to rattle around at the sloppy bottom. Dialogue is generally steady and clear, but does get lost a time or two under surrounding effects. This is a track with great potential, but it never manage to put it all together, leaving the critical action scenes out in the cold.

Sinners and Saints Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Sinners and Saints contains but two extras.

• Sinners and Saints: Behind the Scenes (1080p, 3:40): A brief glimpse into weapons and physical training, shooting action scenes, and creating a car stunt.
• Deleted Scenes (1080p, 7:00): The Ganz Family, Internal Affairs, Sean and Beth, Now We're Talking, Looking for Stacey, Dos Vedanya, and Remember Me?.

Sinners and Saints Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sinners and Saints often struggles to keep up with expectations, but even when it sinks pretty far into bad movie territory, it picks itself up, dusts itself off, and gives it another go. The movie is nothing special from a superficial standpoint -- it's a basic gritty, edgy Cop movie -- but the real highlight here is the underlying effort, the always-evident raw determination to create something better than expected, to go above and beyond and make the best dark genre movie possible under its constraints. The film features some good actors and some mediocre-to-poor technical elements, but it's all made to look better than it really is thanks to that extra effort that's often so lacking in these sorts of generic Action procedurals. Anchor Bay's Blu-ray release of Sinners and Saints features decent video, mediocre audio, and only two extras. Ordinarily, such would be enough to warrant only a recommendation for a rental, but this is a special case. Why not reward the movie for its effort? Buy it at a decent price point.