The Bag Man Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

The Bag Man Blu-ray Movie Review

Paper or Plastic?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 31, 2014

John Cusack has an affinity for characters who, like the professional assassin, Martin Blank, in Grosse Pointe Blank, display "a certain moral flexibility" when it comes to killing their fellow human beings, but suddenly find themselves at a turning point. Besides Blank, Cusack has played such characters in War, Inc. and The Numbers Station and now in The Bag Man (also known as Motel), a dreary thriller that probably sounded better on paper than it plays onscreen. Co-written and directed by first-time helmer David Grovic, The Bag Man began as an original script by character actor James Russo (who played one of the Speck brothers in Django Unchained). Like many scripts by actors, Russo's (as rewritten by Grovic and Paul Conway, also actors) contains several good parts, but the whole is less than their sum. The writers and director are obviously trying for a pulpy neo-noir atmosphere of inescapable evil, but they've neglected to anchor it in anything remotely recognizable. An exercise in style over substance, the film plays out in a lurid fun-house world that grows increasingly laughable as you figure out what's really happening—and most viewers will reach that point long before the end.

The Bag Man was shot in 2012, but Universal kept it on the shelf until 2014, when it quietly dropped it into a few theaters for a week. The film earned just over $60,000 (no, that's not a typo), before being sent to its video graveyard.

The Bag Man is one of those stories that depends on a shady mastermind who pulls everyone's strings, or at least enough of them to keep the audience guessing. This one is named Dragna, and he's a fabulously wealthy businessman played by Robert De Niro with a whiff of the sulphurous detachment that he brought to his early role as Louis Cyphre in Angel Heart, but with much bigger hair and more florid speeches. We know that Dragna's business isn't strictly legitimate, because, as he sits eating dinner opposite John Cusack's Jack in a huge private jet that only a billionaire could afford, Dragna gives Jack the kind of job that only a crook would offer. He wants Jack to pick up a bag from point A, bring it to point B, which happens to be a specific room at an out-of-the-way motel, and wait there for Dragna to meet him. And Dragna has one more stipulation: Under no circumstances is Jack to look inside the bag. Hints in the conversation suggest that Jack himself is some kind of hitman/contractor, whose skills are well-known to Dragna.

It's a potentially great opening, raising all sorts of interesting possibilities. (Maybe the bag contains whatever was in that mysterious briefcase retrieved by Vincent and Jules in Pulp Fiction.) But the warning signs begin flashing when Dragna asks Jack if he's ever read German novelist Hermann Hesse. As a child of the Sixties, when everyone read Hermann Hesse (and some of us even studied him), I can assure you of one thing: Whenever a movie script drags Hesse into the mix, the movie is in trouble.

As are most mysterious assignments in the movies, Jack's turns out to be "off" from the get-go. Everyone he meets is either trying to kill him or steal the bag, and usually both, beginning with the courier who makes the initial delivery, thereby underestimating Jack's own prowess as a killer. The courier's body spends the rest of the film traveling with Jack in a car trunk whose lid refuses to close all the way, which is The Bag Man's idea of a running joke. When Jack reaches the designated motel—it makes the Bates Motel look homey—he encounters further adversaries in the form of several G-men, two psycho-pimps, Lizard and Guano (Kirk 'Sticky Fingaz' Jones and Martin Klebba, doing a twisted Mutt and Jeff routine), and the local sheriff, Larson (Dominic Purcell), who is brutal and thoroughly corrupt. The OCD motel clerk, Ned (Crispin Glover), doesn't seem to be after the bag, but he clearly spells trouble. The mere request for Room 13 sends him into a fit of nervous tics.

Then, of course, there's the femme fatale, a zoned-out Israeli hooker who works for Lizard and Guano and goes by the name of Rivka (Brazilian actress Rebecca Da Costa, Seven Below). She's the first to accost Jack after he's checked into Room 13 (per Dragna's instructions), and she's far too tall, too beautiful and too unmarked (at least initially) to have led the life she's supposed to have been leading. Everything about her is suspicious, and yet she's the only one who doesn't ever try to harm Jack (which may be the most suspicious thing about her).

After Jack experiences many bizarre and violent encounters involving guns, vehicles, shovels and knives, Dragna finally appears and begins explaining it all, but at that point you may notice that The Bag Man still has almost half an hour to run. What more could possibly happen? The answer, unfortunately, is way too much. Characters like Dragna are best left to the viewer's imagination. The more their machinations are revealed and explained, the less frightening and the more ludicrous they become.

Director Grovic tips his hand in an early scene when he shows Dragna savagely disciplining an employee who lost a lot of money at his currency desk, even though, as she protested at the time, she knew nothing about trading and Dragna made her substitute for someone who was ill. No businessman, legitimate or otherwise, could operate in such a manner for long if he wanted to remain successful, but The Bag Man's final act reveals this psychotic approach to be Dragna's SOP. Having arrived in the guise of a film noir, by the end The Bag Man reveals its true identity as the tale of a typical comic book super-villain who's mad, mad, mad, I tell you. Even Herman Hesse would have giggled.

The Bag Man Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Bag Man was shot by two directors of photography. Steve Mason (Harsh Times) handled principal photography in New Orleans, where the motel set was constructed, while steadicam operator David Knight (Stealth) took over for filming in New York, which included the scenes set in Dragna's mansion. According to the credits, the film was shot digitally on Sony F65 cameras (part of the family of equipment commonly known under the brand name "CineAlta"). In the behind-the-scenes documentary, director Grovic notes that the actors appreciated working on a film that did not rely heavily on digital effects, although it is also clear from some of the set footage that such effects were essential to realizing the more dangerous stunts. The film's elaborate and often hallucinatory palette is largely attributed to production designer J. Dennis Washington but was undoubtedly enhanced by the colorist of the digital intermediate.

Universal's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is typical of their releases of new features, especially when the disc can be sourced from a DI. The image is sharp, detailed and clear; the blacks are inky and solid (a critical element, since so much of the film occurs at night); and the colors are saturated and neon-intense. Even though the motel where the main action occurs is supposed to be somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, the New Orleans location has somehow lent a sense of sweaty desperation to the scene, which adds to the mood for as long as the film manages not to collapse under its own absurdities. Mason's lensing adds a palpable sense of danger to the motel scenes beyond what the script provides, and the Blu-ray reproduces it impressively. The Bag Man's visuals are one of the few reasons to see it.

Univeral doesn't skimp on bandwidth. The Bag Man is encoded with an average bitrate of 31.99 Mbps, ensuring a superior, artifact-free picture.

The Bag Man Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Bag Man's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, has plenty of opportunity for both full-throated action and subtle atmosphere. Good examples of the latter can be heard in the opening scene in Dragna's jet, where Jack has his mission explained to him, or in the later scenes in Dragna's mansion, with its huge but quiet spaces. The former is displayed in Jack's encounters with his various adversaries, all of which end in some sort of violent cacophony that comes at you from all sides. This being a contemporary mix, the dynamic range is wide, although the sound mixers don't reach for the deepest possible bass extension, which would be out of place in this kind of drama. The dialogue is generally clear, even with Rebecca Da Costa's attempt to speak English with an Israeli accent. The generic action/suspense score is credited to Tony Morales (Enemies Closer) and Edward Rogers (NYPD Blue).

The Bag Man Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes of The Bag Man (1080i; 1.78:1; 29:49): This is one of those "making of" featurettes that's more interesting than the movie it's about. It proves the adage that no one sets out to make a bad movie, as Cusack, De Niro, Da Costa, other cast members and director Grovic all discuss their intentions and interest in the project. Additional participants include producers Warren Ostergard and Cherelle George. Substantial location footage is included from New Orleans and New York. Warning: Spoilers galore!



• Trailers: The film's trailer is not included, but at startup the disc plays trailers for Better Living Through Chemistry, Bates Motel: Season One, Welcome to the Jungle and Not Safe for Work. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

The Bag Man Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Bag Man is harmless enough, but life is too short and there are too many better movies for me to encourage anyone else to waste their time on it. If you must, then the Blu-ray's technical merits can't be faulted. My advice is to approach the film as an unintentional comedy, because that's the only way it makes any kind of sense.