The Gateway Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

The Gateway Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 7, 2021

Some may recognize Olivia Munn's name from either television series like The Newsroom or films like X-Men: Apocalypse, but Munn also had a brief and apparently weirdly controversial run as a correspondent on The Daily Show, back when it was hosted by Jon Stewart. Evidently Munn's hiring caused "outrage" in certain circles as somehow being "sexist" because Munn was perceived as a "sex symbol", which is one of more peculiar cases of manufactured umbrage I can remember reading about. In any case, for those who do remember Munn on The Daily Show, one reason may be her very funny take on the so-called "Tiger Mothering" phenomenon that became well known after Amy Chua's Tiger Mothers: Raising Children the Chinese Way hit the bestseller lists. Munn's "interview" (?) with her own mother is kind of priceless, as is her interchange with a daffy woman named Kaufman (whose misspelling of her surname should have been an instant first clue, and, yes, that's a joke). Munn is on hand in The Gateway as a put upon, more or less single mom named Dahlia, who might be termed the "anti Tiger Mother" in that her inattention to her daughter Ashley (Taegen Burns) may result in the girl being put into foster care. Dahlia and Ashley have attracted the attention of social worker Parker Jode (Shea Whigham), whose own troubled past has informed his desire to help kids (and their parents) who are experiencing trauma. Now, all of this may sound like The Gateway is going to be a so- called "kitchen sink drama" focusing on family dysfunctions and those who attempt to ameliorate them, and in fact that is indeed part of what's going on in the film. Unfortunately, co-writer and director Michele Civetta perhaps didn't trust his initial instincts, since he's on hand in a brief supplement included on this disc talking about the original conception for the film, which seemed more tied to the above description than this finished product, which also works in a kind of ridiculous mixture of drug running, potential hostage taking, and other hoary content that makes the film play like a standard issue crime thriller.

There are a couple of opening vignettes in The Gateway that seem to be auguring a kind of interestingly gritty take on what an urban social worker's life might be like. Parker shows up at a tenement and has a sweet if subtextually troubling interchange with a little boy, who says his parents are "sleeping" in the other room. Unfortunately, that turns out to be the case for only one of the parents, and rather briskly the film has set up a kind of perilous emotional territory for both Parker and those surrounding him. That would seem to perhaps be carrying over into Parker's relationship with Dahlia and Ashley, but as soon as husband and father Mike (Zach Avery) is revealed to be a violent convict about to be released on parole, anyone with a knowledge of the Syd Field School of Screenwriting may be able to predict where the story will be headed, especially once drug running and Mike's crime lord boss Duke (Frank Grillo) enter the fray.

The Gateway makes passingly decent attempts at introducing some character focus into what increasingly becomes a surprisingly routine action thriller, with my personal favorite element being Bruce Dern's typically taciturn characterization as Parker's jazz trumpet playing dad Marcus. I've previously joked about how actors pretending to play the piano on screen should at least attempt to do some realistic looking fingering, but the film offers a "trumpet solo" from Marcus where Dern never moves his fingers. That obviously joking element aside, there is a subplot here dealing with Parker's own precarious upbringing and his subsequent substance abuse, something that spills over into a somewhat hyperbolic scene where Marcus assumes that Parker is attempting to get Ashley to run drugs, rather than Mike, who is the real culprit.

Kind of ironically The Gateway's very title seems to hint at a passage between two locations, and in an analogous way the film tries to weave together two kind of disparate ideas. Some of the personal relationships here have a visceral if disturbing quality, while the action thriller element never quite gels. Munn is a captivating screen presence, and even straight to video and/or television stalwarts like Grillo and Whigham are rather good. Interestingly, the screenplay's original version was on the so-called Black List, the regular aggregation of "best unproduced works", and I assume it's that version that Civetta is discussing in the supplement I mention above. I think if that original version had been made, the film might have been significantly more powerful. As it is, it's a really odd and discomfiting mixture that is done in by its own unwillingness to depart from genre expectations. The film is bookended with supposedly meaningful epigrams about children shorn from their home environments and stuck into foster care (see screenshot 19 for a hopefully unintended typo, for any nascent grammar police reading this review), but the film itself would rather deal in contrived threats, fights and gunfire.

The Gateway Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Gateway is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.00:1. I haven't been able to dig up any authoritative information on this shoot, but stylistically this is a rather interesting presentation at times. Some scenes, notably the opening vignette with Parker checking up on a little boy, are both lit garishly and also filmed from a number of skewed perspectives with things like fisheye lenses (see screenshot 6), giving things an almost hallucinogenic air. I'm assuming this was digitally captured, but what looks like a gritty layer of "grain" has been layered on select scenes, while others have the more sleek clarity of untweaked digital capture. That can give a slightly variable look in terms of sharpness and fine detail levels. As can be seen in several of the screenshots accompanying this review, rather large swaths of the film are bathed in almost alien looking yellows and greens. Detail levels are rather good throughout the presentation, and commendably even scenes like the purple drenched club sequence featuring Marcus magically soloing without any hand movements doesn't tip over into posterizing.

The Gateway Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Gateway features an often forceful DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that benefits (if you're in the mood for it) from a veritable glut of source cues that underpin the action. A lot of those tend to be bass heavy, giving the lower frequencies substantial presence throughout the mix. Outdoor material also offers good placement of ambient environmental effects. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English, French and Spanish subtitles are available.

The Gateway Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Living Legends: The Cast of The Gateway (HD; 4:14) is an okay EPK whose title might recall a paraphrase of Inigo Montoya's immortal line in The Princess Bride about a phrase (in this instance) not meaning what people utilizing it think it means.


• The Gateway Trailer (HD; 2:20)

Additionally, a digital copy is included, and for those who care about packaging, there is a slipcover.

The Gateway Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's with tongue perhaps only slightly in cheek that I state that by the time this film was wrapping up with a sudden gospel choir performance, I wondered if perhaps I had missed a Tyler Perry's credit in the title. The Gateway has some rather interesting elements, but they're frequently buried beneath unnecessary bombast. Technical merits are generally solid for those who are considering making a purchase.