Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

The Wicker Man Blu-ray Movie Review

Raise your hand if you'd rather burn alive than watch 'The Wicker Man.'

Reviewed by Martin Liebman April 1, 2009

I didn't even know you had a plot.

Aficionados of film who approach the medium with a slightly more intellectual curiosity than the mere cruncher of popcorn understand that rarely do the succeeding decades each produce more than one film of rare quality -- a film that combines a well-developed screen play with a visionary director, a cast of genuine actors whose immersion in their characters create a story of life-like brilliance, a dedication to cinematographic detail, and editing of a quality rarely experienced -- that make for a classic film of such undeniable brilliance that all but the most blissfully unaware of filmgoers do not recognize the clarity of vision and intent that come together in a movie that transcends all other films of its period. Metropolis (1927), Grand Hotel (1932), The Maltese Falcon (1941), On the Waterfront (1954), Doctor Zhivago, (1965), Chinatown (1974), Blade Runner (1982), and Fargo (1996), each represent filmmaking at its pinnacle. Clearly, intellectually gifted and astute students of film recognize that these titles exemplify filmmaking at the pinnacle of the decade each graced. Such a film for the first decade of the 21st century certainly is not the Nicholas Cage (Ghost Rider) snorer, The Wicker Man.

Alright, who's the wise guy that erased all the best lines from the movie?

Officer Edward Malus (Cage) receives a letter from his ex-fiance stating that her daughter, Rowan, has vanished, with clues leading to the mysterious Summersisle where a cultish society lives in seclusion. Malus is shunned as an outsider, his basic needs of food and shelter provided only as a necessary courtesy. The townsfolk disavow all knowledge of Rowan, but Malus begins to piece together clues that lead him to believe she was recently a member of the community. As the outsider digs deeper, the townsfolk only seem to become more strange, more devious, and more disturbed at Malus and his methods of investigation and, ultimately, intimidation. Malus soon finds himself in the middle of a scheme more deadly and diabolical than anything he could have imagined.

Cage enthralls audiences with his brilliant and insightful character study of Sheriff Edward Malus, a man determined to solve a crime, but unlike the characters portrayed by Bogart, Nicholson, Ford, and McDormand in the above-noted classics, Cage increases the pantheon of dogged and celebrated detectives by providing not only a performance of greater lasting quality, but delivering memorable lines such as "what happened to her?" and "how did it get burned?" with such gusto, significance, and naturalism as quite possibly never to be topped in the decades and centuries of cinema to come. Certainly, no individual involved in solving a true crime could ever, on their own, so engage a witness as to assure immediate results as Cage asking those simply-stated yet so complex-in-meaning and precise-in-purpose questions. Indeed, authors of textbooks on criminology and university faculty invested in the pedagogy of this field would do well to incorporate such truth-seeking idioms into both texts and lectures. It is in detail such as this, combining the unmistakable talent of the actor with the breath-stopping transcendence of reality, moving far beyond the static complacency of all but a few great films, that audiences revel in and greatly admire The Wicker Man. This structure of detail provides, in this most excellent cinematic experience, the moment of time-stopping awe that differentiates a true classic film from the mostly mundane millions of miles of misused celluloid, making The Wicker Man a cinematic experience to be treasured and oft-enjoyed. Or not.

The Wicker Man Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Wicker Man arrives on Blu-ray with a mediocre 1080p, 2.35:1-framed transfer. The image appears soft much of the time, and fine levels of visible detail are sparse. Viewers will make out precious few stitches in clothing, fine lines in faces, or textures of various pieces of wooden furniture seen throughout the film. The image is clearer than standard definition material, but it's not all that sharp; it won't be mistaken for DVD, but it never offers that "wow" factor of the best of the best high definition transfers, either. Colors are neither too drab nor overly bright, but they appear a bit darker than natural. The film always seems like it was shot during overcast conditions, but considering its Pacific Northwest setting, that's to be expected. Flesh tones are decent, and black levels range from fine to a bit too gray. The Wicker Man makes for passable high definition material and nothing more.

The Wicker Man Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A lossless soundtrack partakes in a vanishing act on this disc, leaving only a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix to entertain the ears of the film's audience. The track is a pedestrian one, loud and somewhat aggressive at times but never very exciting, making do with what it has to work with and never distinguishing itself from the thousands of other Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks out there, on Blu-ray and otherwise. A few good directional effects are heard scattered here and there, a crow screeching and flapping its wings inside a schoolhouse in one scene, for example. Dialogue reproduction is good, and the music is presented with crispness and clarity. The Wicker Man sounds neither good nor bad. It's a mediocre, forgettable track that does all that is asked of it, nothing more and nothing less.

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

The Wicker Man comes to Blu-ray with only two extras, a trailer (480p, 2:16) and a commentary track with Director Neil LaBute, Actors Leelee Sobieski and Kate Beahan, Editor Joel Plotch, and Costume Designer Lynette Meyer. LaBute dominates the track, discussing the full range of standard commentary fare -- shooting locales, the work of the actors, some of the updates from the original 1973 film, shooting techniques, and more. It's a bland listen, certainly far more than is necessary for what is a fairly dull and meaningless movie.

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

In all seriousness on April Fool's Day, The Wicker Man is a truly awful movie. The dialogue is consistently terrible, the pacing makes "sluggish" seems like a speeding rocket, and the plot makes little sense. The characters are poorly developed, with all of them, save for Cage, blending one into another, the result a jumbled mess where it's easier to give up rather than sift through them all. This is a movie that goes nowhere and does nothing on the way, simply meandering through a script that provides Nicolas Cage with the worst material of his otherwise good career. Warner Brothers' Blu-ray release of The Wicker Man is satisfactory for the quality of the movie. The video and audio are bland but passable, and the disc isn't weighed down by too many extras. The Wicker Man is worth renting just to see how truly awful it really is, but otherwise it's one to avoid.