The Search for One-Eye Jimmy Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		2.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

The Search for One-Eye Jimmy Blu-ray Movie Review

Jimmy-Come-Lately

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater March 12, 2012

Not every unremembered film deserves to be rediscovered. For most, there are good reasons why they faded quietly from public consciousness. Case in point: The Search for One-Eye Jimmy, a low-budget comedy that boasts an impressive cast but almost entirely squanders its star power with a goes-nowhere story that amounts to little more than a series of nominally funny intertwined sketches. Shot in 1993 but not shown theatrically until 1996, the movie got lost in the indie film boom and promptly forgotten, seen only by the scattered few who were intrigued enough by the VHS box art to rent it from Blockbuster. It never even got a DVD release. Recently, though, Kino-Lorber acquired the rights to the film and decided to put it out on DVD and Blu-ray, perhaps banking on our pop-culture's nascent, semi-ironic nostalgia for the 1990s. (The '80s were so 2009.) Will The Search for One-Eye Jimmy be reevaluated as an unjustly lost gem from the pre-Pulp Fiction days? I kind of doubt it. Still, it does have some slight value as a cinematic time capsule for a specific place, era, and filmmaking attitude. Namely, pre-hipster Brooklyn, pre-grunge 1990s, and pre-Internet indie Do-It-Yourself-ness.

Ol' One-Eye...

In The Search for One-Eye Jimmy, bandana-wearing L.A. film school reject and wanna-be director Les (Holt McCallany) returns to his Red Hook roots with a cameraman in tow, hoping to make a documentary about the neighborhood. (The cameraman, oddly enough, is played by Lodge Kerrigan, whom fans of deeply disturbing films might recognize as the writer/director of the 1993 schizophrenia flick, Clean, Shaven. Though he appears in just about every scene, he only has one or two lines in the entire movie.) Les sets about interviewing the local schmoes, starting with the big- skulled and small-brained Joe "Head" (Michael Badallucco)--the oldest virgin on the block--who tells him about the recent disappearance of "One-Eye" Jimmy Hoyt, a good-for-nothing drunk from around the way. This is the lead Les has been looking for, and he decides to follow it to see where it takes him, secretly hoping "One-Eye" turns up dead, which will ensure his film has a dramatic, award-worthy ending. From here, the movie becomes about the making of the documentary within the film--how very meta--with Les and Joe Head and the ever-present cameraman joined by an increasingly large crew of flunkies who each think they have a bead on where One-Eye might be. The Search basically snowballs, its cast expanding as it rolls along through the grimy streets of south Brooklyn.

And what a (terribly underutilized) cast! Steve Buscemi plays Jimmy's limp-haired brother, Ed, a Budweiser-swilling slacker who makes a living selling Polaroids to and of people off the street standing with a life-sized cardboard cutout of local pro-wrestler Hulk Harrigan. John Turturro struts his stuff as "Disco Bean"--a relic of the '70s who refuses to acknowledge the death of Saturday night fever--while his real-life brother Nick Turturro swaggers around as "Junior" Junior, a blinged-out car thief. One of the film's running gags is how has-been boxer "Lefty" (Ray Mancini) always has it out for Junior, who keeps stealing his turd-brown sedan. At one point--to give you an idea of how intelligent these chumps are--the two get into fisticuffs and Lefty breaks Junior's $37 "subscription" glasses. (Junior means "prescription," in case you didn't catch that.) There are numerous other wingnuts on the loose here as well. Tony Sirico plays a loan shark who's lost so much weight his nickname has changed from "The Whale" to "The Snake." Flashdance's Jennifer Beal shows up as a spectacularly untalented sketch artist, and Samuel L. mother-loving Jackson, god bless him, very nearly saves the film as "Colonel Ron," a Vietnam vet with rotting black teeth who fishes for footwear in the filthy Gowanus Canal. Alas, his best line from the movie is probably unfit to print on this family-friendly website.

You'd think a collection of Noo Yawk oddballs like this might make for a truly crazy comedy, but The Search for One-Eye Jimmy is surprisingly pedestrian. First-time writer/director Sam Henry Kass gets the characters right, but doesn't give them much of substance to do or say. The script drifts from one hokey encounter to the next on the "mean" streets of Brooklyn, hustling for a plot but coming up empty-pocketed. The films pull a fast one on us when it hints that Jimmy has been kidnapped--finally, we think, something is happening!--but this proves to be a week-old red herring. Kass went on to be a writer for Seinfeld, the show famously about "nothing," but the dialogue in Search isn't nearly witty enough for the film to get away with the same kind of directionlessness. Of course, like Private Ryan, One-Eye Jimmy does eventually turn up--he's played by an absolutely crazed Sam Rockwell--and while I won't spoil the circumstances around his disappearance, I'll just say that the situation unsuccessfully strives for Waiting for Godot-style absurdity. Worse, the denouement tries to spitball some last-minute satire at big studio Hollywood, and likewise misses the target completely. There are a few good bits--John Turturro is hilarious in the "Disco Bean" dance sequence--but the film just isn't as funny as it thinks it is, belabored with bad sex jokes and juvenile body humor. Now, I'm normally up for just about any movie that features Samuel L. Jackson flying off the handle, but this one just didn't do it for me. I would've been content to leave One-Eye Jimmy in the '90s.

The Search for One-Eye Jimmy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Search for One-Eye Jimmy makes its DVD and Blu-ray debuts on the same day, and the high definition edition obviously comes out ahead in overall clarity. But don't expect picture quality wonders. The film was shot for cheap on 16mm and then given a 35mm blow-up for theatrical release. Since that process inherently increases the graininess and softness of the picture, and since the image here is so exceptionally grainy and soft, it looks to me like the film's 1080p/AVC-encoded Blu-ray transfer was probably sourced from a 35mm print and not the original 16mm negatives. At no point does the picture even begin to look sharp sharp, though I suspect it probably looks as good as it's ever going to considering how it was shot and processed. It is what it is--and extremely low-budget 16mm picture. Color seems balanced and natural at least, with a decent image density and contrast that's neither too pushed nor too flat. The print itself hasn't been cleaned up at all, and you'll notice black and white specks, small scratches, bits of debris, and occasionally even black "reel change" dots up in the right hand corner of the screen. (Another tell-tale sign that the transfer was most-likely taken from a 35mm blow-up.) If you've been waiting for a new home video version of the film since the VHS days, you'll probably appreciate the increase in all-around picture quality, but don't get your hopes up for a miraculous high-definition restoration.

The Search for One-Eye Jimmy Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's shoestring budget is apparent in the audio as well. Kino-Lorber has given One-Eye Jimmy a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo mix, but a lossless track can't hide flaws inherent in the source material. The thing you'll notice first is that the on-location recording is never studio-quality clear. The dialogue has a tendency to sound somewhat far away, and occasionally muffled. (And, more rarely, slightly out of sync.) Voices are still completely intelligible--I never had a hard time understanding what was being said--but the limitations of shooting for cheap on the streets are obvious. Likewise, the music and spare effects all have a squashed-in-the-mid-range quality that's about what you'd expect from this kind of film. Once again, it is what it is, but I don't see any real cause to complain. Well, maybe one. The disc has no subtitle options whatsoever, which is a bummer for those who might need or want them.

The Search for One-Eye Jimmy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extras on the disc are a gallery of seven high-definition stills and high definition trailers for Meeting Spencer and Winnebago Man.

The Search for One-Eye Jimmy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One-Eye Jimmy was lost but now it's found. And I'm not sure that too many people will care. This extremely low-budget comedy features some veritable titans of indiedom--Steve Buscemi, Samuel L. Jackson, John Turturro--but it's just not very funny. Go ahead and rent it if you're a fan of its stars and you want to check out a little-seen footnote of the 1990s indie film boom, but don't expect an undiscovered Reservoir Dogs.