Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Sweet Virginia Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson April 2, 2018

Please note that this review includes several spoilers.

As Sweet Virginia opens on a dark and gloomy night in a small Alaska town, a vehicle is seen parked across the street from a bar. Inside, three employees are playing together. As they banter amiably with each other, a man walks through the door and sits himself at a booth. Mitchell (Jonathan Tucker) informs the potential customer that the bar is closed and he needs to go but the visitor repeatedly says he's hungry and would like the early breakfast special. During the wee hours, it's always sensible and logical to let the man have his food, especially one who asks if his wife is waiting for him back home. The guy leaves but moments later, the door springs open and the same brutish fellow, Elwood (Christopher Abbott), opens gunfire and shoots all three men. As I watched this opening and the way it was constructed, I immediately thought of the Coens' Blood Simple (1984) which is an obvious influence on Canadian director Jamie M. Dagg. Indeed Sweet Virginia plays out much like the Coens' best thrillers although it's probably not on the same level. Dagg had a long script to work with from the China Brothers when he joined the project but cut it down for budgetary reasons. Sam Rossi, the owner of the motel, was first going to be played by Billy Bob Thornton as it was intended for a 65-70-year-old actor. Dagg also has recalled in interviews that the initial setting was going to be 1970s Virginia but he wanted to change it to Alaska and move it up to the present. (The picture was photographed in British Columbia.)

In a beautifully photographed scene along a bridge, Elwood meets with Mitchell's widow, Lila Mccabe (Imogen Poots), who hired him to murder her husband. It turns out that she didn't want anyone else bumped off and is surprised that her hitman executed two others. Lila wanted Mitchell dead for cheating on her and expects to be a wealthy heiress but she also must pay Elwood a large sum. Lila is pretty and tough but Elwood gives her an ultimatum if he doesn't receive his dough. Lila is friends with another widow, Bernadette Barrett (Rosemarie DeWitt), whose husband was also slain in the bar shooting. Bernadette's marriage with Tom (Joseph Lyle Taylor) was deteriorating and she was secretly having an affair with Sam Rossi (Jon Bernthal), an ex-rodeo rider whose afflicted with early Parkinson's. While he awaits his payment, Elwood lodges in the Rossi motel (named after the film's title) and tries to befriend Sam, initially unbeknownst that he's acquainted with Lila. The China Brothers thread these characters together so they'll intersect at later points in the story.

Elwood and Sam have a friendly dinner chat.

For a larger budgeted film, Sam and Elwood would probably be played by Tom Hardy and Colin Farrell but this is not to slight Jon Bernthal and Christopher Abbott in the least (their screen personas remind me of those two actors). Abbott brings both a cool steeliness and ruthless ferocity to Elwood. It's clear that he's had issues with his mother which may have contributed to his rage and sociopathic tendencies. Sam is the more quiet and repressed character. He evidently lost a daughter from a failed marriage and seeks comfort and solace from Bernadette. He kind of treats his motel worker Maggie Russell (Odessa Young) like a daughter but the film doesn't develop that relationship enough. Sweet Virginia is tautly edited by Duff Smith and features ace cinematography by Jessica Lee Gagné. (Dagg watched several of Alan J. Pakula's films and seems to have modeled the light and shadows after Gordon Willis.) One weakness is that Sweet Virginia follows down a predictable path. For example, when Elwood spots something hanging on the wall behind Sam's front desk, the audience realizes what will serve as the MacGuffin. The curious and offbeat relationship between Sam and Elwood becomes the core that propels the narrative toward some compelling penultimate scenes before the climax, which is fairly anticlimactic.

Sweet Virginia Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sweet Virginia makes its North American deubt on HD on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25. The 93-minute feature takes up the majority of space with a standard bitrate averaging 26995 kbps and a total bitrate of 33.31 Mbps. Dagg's second directorial feature is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1. The transfer didn't deliver any obvious problems and appears artifact-free. How did Sweet Virginia look on the big screen in commercial cinemas last year? April Wolfe of LA Weekly denoted the picture's prolonged darkness when she observed, "At one point, I thought I was looking at a completely black screen until a shadow passed through..." In the UK, Jennie Kermode of Eye For Film praised Gagné's subdued pallette: "The images we see are painted in shades of dark mahogany, antique gold and olive green." I reckon that these two descriptions apply to Shout! Factory's transfer as well. The image is consistently dark, even during daylit shots. Dagg and Gagné went for shots that display slivers of light and dark on the faces and figures of the characters. Sometimes eyes are non-visible such as in Screenshot #11. In the interiors, there's a little bit of sunlight that creeps in but the image is never truly bright. Detail is often difficult to see in wide-angle shots where there's soft focus. The transfer reflects the film's noirish mood and setting.

A dozen scene selections are available to choose from on the menu or via your remote.

Sweet Virginia Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sweet Virginia comes with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (2695 kbps, 24-bit) and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo downmix (1639 kbps, 24-bit). I played the feature with the 5.1 mix but I may resort to the 2.0 track upon future viewings. Dialogue emanates from some nasally voices and is low-register in range. Words are discernible but I had to turn my volume up to hear all clearly enough. Bass was crisp and solid all the way through. Wind and nature sounds provide much of the ambience, aside from gunshots and some nice car-opening f/x. Brooke and Will Blair's score is adequately mixed on the surround channels.

Shout! has equipped the disc with English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

Sweet Virginia Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1:59, 1080p) - a 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen post-festival trailer for Sweet Virginia. There are a lot of visual spoilers so don't watch this beforehand.

• Previews - bonus trailers for The Tribes of Palos Verdes, 78/52: Hitchcock's Shower Scene, and I Remember You.

Sweet Virginia Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sweet Virginia is a cackling good thriller with bravura performances from Jon Bernthal and Christopher Abbott. The movie has been released in the UK but only on DVD courtesy of Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment. It also has received a BD edition in Germany from EuroVideo and specs appear identical to Shout's, whose transfer and lossless sound are both above average. No version has any extras beyond a trailer. If you're a big fan of the Coen brothers, than this slipcover edition of Sweet Virginia is well worth picking up.