Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

Trespass Against Us Blu-ray Movie Review

Forgive them their sins.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 8, 2017

Adam Smith is one of those generic sounding names that has nonetheless become famous in a number of different contexts. The most famous Adam Smith is probably the 18th century economist and so-called “moral philosopher”, one of the prime movers of the Scottish Enlightenment. A couple of centuries after this particular Adam Smith rose to renown, another economist, George Goodman, adopted the pseudonym of Adam Smith for an unlikely bestseller called The Money Game, a book about economics which rather unexpectedly became a publishing phenomenon in the late 1960s. A number of other well known Adam Smiths have propagated over the years, including a rather ungainly number of professional athletes. It may be too soon to know whether or not Trespass Against Us director Adam Smith will rise to the top of this rather exclusive group, but if one believes Box Office Mojo’s report that Trespass Against Us “raked in” a feeble $5,711 in box office receipts, one would assume a tractate on economics is probably not forthcoming from this particular bearer of this well known name. Trespass Against Us has some interesting elements, and it features committed performances by Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson as father and son (kinda sorta like their relationship in Assassin's Creed), but either due to inadequacies in the screenplay by Alastair Siddons or Smith’s inability to shape the material effectively, Trespass Against Us may in fact find it hard to find audience members willing to completely forgive some of its transgressions.

Kind of interestingly, and rather unusually (at least in my experience), Trespass Against Us begins with the title card “An Albert Granville Film”, which is a bit unexpected since typically these kinds of credits go to the director. The really weird thing is Albert Granville isn’t even listed in the film’s “official” closing credits, though the name is identified on various online sites as a production entity (one assumes named after an individual). That may be a clue that there may have been some other forces keeping Smith from realizing his vision, or at the very least wanting a kind of “supervisory” credit beyond even that of the putative helmsman.

It’s a little difficult to discern exactly what tone Smith is going for in Trespass Against Us. The film depicts a kind of gypsy caravan, albeit an Irish one, made up of father Colby (Brendan Gleeson), son Chad (Michael Fassbender) and several other family members and hangers on. Colby utilizes a rather bizarre interpretation of religion to enforce his belief that nothing should be rendered unto Caesar (so to speak), leading to a subtext of criminality from which Chad wants to extricate himself, his wife Kelly (Lyndsey Marshal), and (most especially) his two young children, notably his son Tyson (Georgie Smith).

The film begins with a manic sequence where Chad has let Tyson “drive” a car (by sitting on Dad’s lap), in a totally bizarre take on a rabbit hunt that also involves the family dog. A wounded man in the back of the car complains about a broken leg, but this (along with several other elements scattered throughout a kind of slapdash screenplay) is never adequately contextualized, leading to a perhaps intentionally chaotic feeling that may leave many viewers feeling slightly discombobulated. That off kilter feeling is certainly only increased when one of the camp members, Gordon (Sean Harris), seems to be an unrepentant arsonist whose bonfire sets off an explosion that nearly kills Tyson and does kill the family dog.

Meanwhile it becomes apparent that Colby has a kind of emotional stranglehold on Chad, which Chad has become increasingly aware is unhealthy not just for him, but for his kids. When Colby’s burglaries end up making Chad the target of an investigation by a local constable named Lovage (Rory Kinnear), the already fracturing family dynamic becomes even more precarious. This all might have made for an insightful drama examining generational attitudes and perhaps even an at least subliminal take on “nature versus nurture”, but Smith repeatedly injects weird, at times almost surreal, elements that seem to want to aim for either comedy or perhaps simply lunacy, leaving some of the more gritty aspects underdeveloped and therefore not really as resonant as they might be.

While not much of an organic whole, Trespass Against Us benefits from two visceral, rock solid portrayals by the always engaging Gleeson and Fassbender. Gleeson has honed what is by now an almost patented take on a nefarious curmudgeonly sort, and so perhaps his achievement in the film is easier to simply accept as an undeniably professional given. But Fassbender really attempts to bring life to a character who is significantly different from many others the actor has portrayed through the years, and he brings a rather touching vulnerability to Chad, a man with noble intentions who nonetheless can’t escape what seems to be the gravity of both genetics and the vagaries of fate.

Thomas Wolfe gave the world of the epigram one of its most famous phrases in “you can’t go home again”, but Trespass Against Us examines what might be thought of as the flip side of that pronouncement, since Chad’s wish is to get away from “home” (as peripatetic as it evidently is) any way that he can. Chad’s struggles are the focal point of the film, and had the screenplay played it a bit straighter, or if Smith had reigned in some of the excesses on display himself, the story could have had real emotional impact. There’s still some gut wrenching activity here, but it often plays like more like a three ring circus than a nuanced look at a fascinating culture and one of the dysfunctional families living within it.

Note: My colleague Brian Orndorf liked Trespass Against Us at least a little bit more than I did. You can read Brian's thoughts about the film here.

Trespass Against Us Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Trespass Against Us is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. It's getting to be a kind of rare jolt to see "Kodak film" listed in the closing credits, but Trespass Against Us was indeed shot on 35mm with (according to the IMDb) the lesser utilized Aaton Penelope and perhaps more recognizable Arricam LT. This has a really nice "thick" texture at times that supports the film's gritty setting and often literally dirty characters. Stationary shots are nicely detailed if not sharp in the contemporary (digital capture) sense, but the prevalent use of "jiggly cam" tends to add at least the perception of softness to some of the more manic sequences. The palette varies from very naturalistic looking (albeit kind of dusty and drab at times) to obviously graded, sometimes rather effectively so, as in a later sequence that sees Chad bathed in tones of purple. Scenes like that, as well as some nighttime material, can show minor deficits in fine detail levels.

Trespass Against Us Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Trespass Against Us features a sometimes rather boisterous DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, as in the opening sequence with the car roaring through a field, or, later, another scene with a car having an even more serious collision than the one that ends that opening sequence. Otherwise, though, the film plays out in smaller scale, although often quite intense, dialogue scenes, where a lot whatever surround activity there is comes courtesy of stray ambient environmental effects or some of the score choices by The Chemical Brothers. Fidelity is fine and dynamic range quite wide on this problem free track.

Trespass Against Us Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Blood Bonds: On the Set of Trespass Against Us (1080p; 21:54) features some good interviews with the principal cast and crew.


• Heartfelt: Director Adam Smith on The Chemical Brothers (1080p; 4:47) is a brief homage to the film's composers and frequent Smith collaborators.

Trespass Against Us Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I frankly didn't know quite what to make of Trespass Against Us. The film's loosey-goosey opening scenes made me feel like things were almost being played for laughs, but then the angstly, "kitchen sink drama" (albeit a kitchen sink in a trailer) aspects started to kick in, along with some "artier" elements (like a surplus of bird imagery), not always to meaningful effect. There's the core of a fascinating film here, for this kind of "Irish traveler" community hasn't really been exploited on film before, at least not like this (to my knowledge, anyway). The two lead performances are fantastic, but the film's supporting cast has a few too many eccentrics to ever ground the story in an environment that feels totally real. Technical merits are strong for those considering a purchase.