Trespass Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Trespass Blu-ray Movie Review

CZ or the real deal?

Reviewed by Martin Liebman November 17, 2011

They won’t break.

There's a scene in Trespass where the bad guys are rather thrilled to find a diamond necklace of obvious value in their victims' home, only to be told that it's a worthless knockoff from the home shopping channel. Real diamonds won't break, but the fake ones will. Real diamonds have great value, the fake ones only serve to promote an image of great value. It seems like a perfect metaphor for the movie: will a true family hold firm in the face of incredible danger and despair, or will they break, crack under pressure and give into the demands of their captors? Can the movie work on its own merits, or is it just a mirage of snazzy filmmaking techniques covering up flaws? The metaphor works rather well; the family in turmoil as depicted in the movie must find its real worth and authenticity, but the whole of Director Joel Schumacher's Trespass is more akin to the fake cubic zirconia. This is no diamond in the rough, but it sure does a fairly good job of convincing its audience that it does have some worth to it. The movie is little more than skin-deep; it manages to create quite a bit of thick tension, but the story is relatively generic and flat. It's a tribute Schumacher's ability as a filmmaker that he can make such bland material look so good and elicit so much raw emotion from his audience. Trespass is a relatively harmless little picture that's all feeling and no substance, try as it might to convince its audience otherwise.

This could get messy.

Kyle Miller (Nicolas Cage) is a wealthy diamond peddler who's always on the job. He rarely has time for his wife Sarah (Nicole Kidman), not to mention his rebellious teenage daughter Avery (Liana Liberato). Avery's latest scheme is to sneak out of the house to attend a party of which her parents disapprove. Kyle and Sarah home alone -- even if they don't know it -- but their empty relationship promises just another evening of the status quo. Things are about to be shaken up, however, when the "police" arrive to inform the family that the neighborhood has recently become prime hunting grounds for criminals. It turns out these "police" are actually the criminals, and they enter the house knowing exactly what it is that they want: Kyle's cash and stones. They've surveyed him and his house for a while and seem to have built a foolproof plan, but Kyle's not one to give in so easily to the demands of petty thieves. As the evening drags on, the Millers must find inner courage to stand their ground as past secrets are reveled and their wildcard daughter remains out of the picture.

The biggest problem in Trespass isn't the acting or direction. The former is more than adequate, as is the latter, the two combining to elevate the movie into something that exudes enough tension that it's often thick enough to cut with the metaphorical knife. The real culprit holding Trespass back and keeping it a merely "average" Thriller is its completely transparent plot. It's easy to see what's coming, and what few secrets the movie does hold are so obviously telegraphed that all that tension is greatly reduced. Schumacher does keep the picture steadily paced, and despite the transparency issues, he manages to keep the thing just organic enough to believe that something could happen that's not completely obvious. Unfortunately, the movie never gets there. Schumacher keeps his audience on the edge of its seat despite the script's best efforts to the contrary; it always seems like, just maybe, there's a curveball or two coming, but each new pitch has no movement to it, coming in hot and steady but straight and predictable nevertheless. It's enough to impress, but it's not enough achieve more than middling success. Trespass is nevertheless a fun watch, but despite its many chances to excel beyond the norm, the movie just stagnates and goes with the flow, leaving viewers satisfied on a base level but wishing for something with more teeth and guts and less predictability.

There are some things that the film does relatively well. As noted, the cast is fairly strong, performing admirably enough despite the script's lack of polish. Cage and Kidman play the victims nicely, doling out some heavy, difficult performances that see them desperately attempting to fend off attempts on theirs and one another's lives, all the while trying to defuse the situation with Glock, Sig, and Heckler and Koch pistols aimed at their heads. They squeeze out a good bit of empathy and tension from the situation, though much of it comes from their becoming progressively more bloody and broken as the movie goes on rather than as a result of real, palpable emotional and psychological trauma. The villains are nicely portrayed, too, particularly evident as their collective tough façade wears down and their true identities and purposes become revealed. That's the film's other area of strength: creating real characters on both side of the gun rather than keeping the bad guys as "empty ski masks," to alter a metaphor. The picture earns more credence by creating something of a full-circle storyline that brings victim and criminal together. The subplots do suffer from the same general transparency as the main story, but there's at least an effort there that makes the movie a bit better, a touch more palatable, than it probably would have otherwise been.

Trespass Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Trespass' 1080p transfer is a little like the movie, strong in places and frustratingly weak in others. Fortunately, the picture quality far more often than not falls on the positive side of the ledger. Colors are sometimes balanced but sometimes unnaturally warm and also unnaturally lifeless. Much of the movie has a rather sterile feel to it, despite a fairly light but nevertheless readily-evident grain structure. The result is something of a mixed palette that sees flesh tones range anywhere from unusually golden to unusually pale. Outdoor greens and indoor woods can look a little harsh, but flashy silver safes and chlorine-treted pool water both look fairly neutral. Fine detail is also mixed; there's never an astonishing level of detail to be seen, but faces, clothes, and general surfaces around the house -- as smooth and lifeless as they naturally may be -- pass as adequately conveyed in high definition in some places, but do excel in others. The image is stable and quite clear. It's also free of print issues and obvious digital tinkering. Blacks are hit-or-miss; some scenes see background shadows and dark clothes melt together with no separation or definition, while they're deep and natural but not overpowering in other places. This is neither the best nor the worst Blu-ray has to offer, but it fortunately winds up on the "better" end of spectrum when it's all said and done.

Trespass Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Trespass doesn't rob audiences of a good listen. Millennium's Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack is active and sometimes even intense. Music enjoys rather good clarity that drops off a bit in places but picks up elsewhere. It plays with fair spacing across the front, a slight but evident surround support structure, and a good bit of bass. The latter is sometimes tight and sometimes loose, notably in the early party sequence where noisy music thumps into the listening area. Dialogue echoes nicely through the Miller's cavernous home but otherwise never strays from the center channel. Ambience is minimal and limited, mostly, to that party sequence that throws a lot of sound at the listener and does a fair job of recreating a raucous environment. Various action effects, particularly gunshots, are neither potent nor wimpy. Most favor the former, but listeners won't mistake this track for an afternoon at the shooting range. This is a competent but not necessarily accomplished soundtrack, but the whole suits the movie well enough.

Trespass Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Trespass contains only one true supplement that's directly related to the film.

• Trespass: Inside the Thriller (1080p, 5:07): A pretty basic feature that sees cast and crew talking up the movie and its premise, intertwined with plenty of scenes from the finished film.
• Previews: Additional Millenium titles.
• DVD Copy.
• Digital Copy.

Trespass Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Trespass is nothing special, but it's good enough to hold the audience's attention. It's polished all around and does the best it can with a handicapped script, a script that does "generic" rather well but that fails to take the genre in a new direction. Director Joel Schumacher keeps the movie rolling, creating a fair sense of tension despite a predictability in both the main storyline and the secondary plots. The movie is just good enough to get through a watch, but it has about zero replay value. Therefore, it's worth a rental, considering the frustrating quality of the film, the midlevel picture quality, and relative absence of extras.