The Details Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

The Details Blu-ray Movie Review

The devil is in these "Details," and he's having a whale of a time with all this mischief.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 8, 2013

Life just...went on.

The Details can be as charming as it can be repulsive, as humorous as it can be dark, as likable as it can be despicable. It's a classic "everything spirals out of control" film, a story in which so may little things -- the title "details" -- come together in peculiar ways, and always playing to some emotion tied to the adjectives listed above. That doesn't make it an uneven picture. On the contrary, it knows exactly what it's doing with every element, and that broad wave of emotions combined with the plot advancements that become more and more curious, more and more adventurous, and finally more and more ridiculous all find a harmony together that's difficult to construct and even more difficult to sustain. Fortunately, the picture never really wears out its welcome and it never too terribly fumbles the way all the pieces fit together. Sometimes it pushes a little too far towards those negative adjectives, but ultimately The Details proves an approachable and well-made little picture, even as it grows dramatically darker and sometimes even gently creepier as it steams towards a final shot that embodies all of the emotions -- cool, real, odd, deplorable -- all at once.

Those pesky details...

Everyman Jeff Lang (Tobey Maguire) lives in an idyllic little Northwestern suburb with his wife Nealy (Elizabeth Banks) and their young son. He wants to expand the house a little bit, make room for a new nursery for a second bundle of joy they hope to soon conceive. His building permit is rejected, but he goes ahead with the remodel, anyway, and pays off his neighbor Lila (Laura Linney) with a houseplant for her silence, though that many not be nearly enough considering all she really wants and all the hassles the remodel causes. Unfortunately, when new sod is laid in the backyard, raccoons tear it up. No matter what Jeff tries, he can't stop them from tearing up his new lawn. He finally sets out poison, which yields an unexpected consequence. Meanwhile, a lack of sex in his relationship leads him to seek comfort from close married friend Rebecca (Kerry Washington) whose husband Peter (Ray Liotta) is the type that won't take any sort of nonsense on the side from his wife. Finally, Jeff's basketball buddy Lincoln (Dennis Haysbert) doesn't have long to live, and Jeff decides to do everything in his power to grant him the gift of life. However, he could never imagine the bad that may very well come from his gesture of selfless good.

In The Details, no good deed goes unpunished, no bad deed goes unpunished, and it seems like, at least in this little life snapshot, the cause and effect relationship, the overreaching and very literally real symbiosis circle-of-life theory, is proven correct. It's also a story that breaks one of the most famous laws known to man, and it does so by sticking its tongue out at Sir Isaac Newton and laughing all the way to comedy and tragedy both. Here, there's not an opposite and equal reaction to every action but rather an overkill reaction that sprouts new actions with their own overcooked reactions, all exponentially increasing in severity until the characters reach a brutally honest breaking point, when the bending of laws and the breaking of the human spirit -- literally and figuratively -- becomes too heavy a burden to bear. The picture's distribution of character highs and lows seems always in flux and terribly malleable; never does the picture settle, and every development is only a springboard for several more. Suffice it to say, there's so much going on -- and it's tied together so well -- that The Details is best experienced with as little prior knowledge as possible as to what happens and, more importantly, why.

That said, this isn't a movie that will appeal to all audiences. The characters are morally broken, and nobody -- not the characters called angels, not the characters who, to a point, really are kinda-sorta the "angels" -- gets out of the movie unscathed, unscarred, not in some way a changed person by means of illegal or immoral actions. The good news is that the cast largely seems to have fun with the material, to find that perfect balance between darkly humorous and darkly, well, just dark, because there's an awful lot of that going on in the movie, too. Dennis Haysbert is the film's best asset, and he needs to be just that considering how important his character becomes as the story develops, transitioning from sympathetic side character to someone completely different -- in several ways -- as the story unfolds. Haysbert brings a very real sense of humanity to the part and a very approachable demeanor, too, and it's the way he carries the part and molds the character that makes the movie work so well by the end, even considering the path his character takes. Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Banks are solid as the married couple focal point, but Laura Linney is nearly as good as Haysbert at building her character, creating a fine line between strange, sympathetic, likable, and deplorable, a real chameleon of a character and a performance that's capable of finding, working, and emoting all those different pieces to perfection.

The Details Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Details features a largely beautiful high definition transfer. Anchor Bay's film-sourced transfer does show one instance of rather noticeable banding across a bright sky and a few soft shots along the way, but otherwise there's zero room for complaint. Details are usually nothing less than striking; there's a variety of shots to open the film -- a platter full of cheese, worm-ridden sod, and so on -- that reveal practically lifelike textures and attention to detail that could only be more realistic in person. Facial and clothing textures are fantastic, too, and every shot of Lila's brick exterior home couldn't be more naturally textured. Colors are vibrant but balanced; the film shows a host of hues that dazzle, particularly under brighter conditions and especially in an operating room where surgical blue cloth looks absolutely marvelous. The darker interior of Lila's home, for instance, isn't so colorful but it does reveal every hue as well as can be expected under the conditions. Neither black levels nor flesh tones stray too far from accurate. The print is free of any imperfections like scratches or dirt. Blu-ray transfers don't get a whole lot snazzier than this.

The Details Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Details delivers a balanced, enjoyable, and sometimes immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. There's the expectedly fine music clarity, playing smoothly and evenly across the front with light surround support. Minor ambient effects are also clearly delivered. Chirping birds and other small but mood-critical exterior atmospherics are nicely integrated into the track. More robust interior elements, such as the din of a church service or the reverberations inside a basketball court, both naturally immerse the listener and place him or her realistically into both environments. Chapter seven enjoys a good little bit of quality bass, the most pronounced low end element in the entire film. Dialogue, no surprise, plays evenly and with a natural tone from the center speaker. All told, this is a fine lossless soundtrack from Anchor Bay.

The Details Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Details contains only an "Alternate Beginning" (SD, 2:06) and an "Alternate Ending" (SD, 4:51).

The Details Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Details isn't a perfect movie, but it's a solid entry with its value coming in how absurdly it all comes together. The movie blends surprises and predicability nicely, and it's fascinating to watch how all of the varied pieces come together and fall apart. It's a morally empty movie -- even the good deeds often turn out poorly, though characters do often show some doubt and disappointment in themselves and in one another -- but a unique experience that should satisfy more open-minded viewers, and that's not even considering its distinctive tone that pulls from cartoon and soap opera elements to novel effect. Anchor Bay's Blu-ray release of The Details offers excellent video and audio. The supplements are disappointingly brief. Definitely worth a rental; a lack of massive replay value makes it a bit more difficult to recommend as a purchase.