Trespass Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Trespass Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson June 20, 2017

Following the strong critical and financial success of New Jack City and Boyz N the Hood, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood producers would find a suitable vehicle to cast Ice-T and Ice Cube in a picture together. The hip hop artists had each enjoyed critical acclaim for breakout performances in two of 1991's box office hits. They did not have to wait long for a pairing as Universal executives had gained notice and had a script waiting for them. The Looters, as Trespass was originally called, became a screenplay by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale in 1977 after the two scribes read an article written by Jon Bradshaw titled "Savage Skulls" in Esquire magazine about a seemingly unapproachable gang in the East Bronx. Zemeckis and Gale penned a draft set in an abandoned urban tenement in an Eastern city that also dealt with a mob dueling with a couple of firefighters seeking a hidden treasure. The script never made it past the development phase until the early nineties when Gale got together with producer Neil Canton, who passed it on to Walter Hill. The California-born filmmaker was rapturous over the material and promptly agreed to direct. William Sadler (Die Hard 2, Hard to Kill) was chosen to play brusque firefighter Don. Then-newcomer Brad Pitt was approached with the more milder part of Vince but turned it down because he deemed it too dark. In retrospective, I think Pitt would have been fantastic as Sadler's counterpart. Perhaps he thought he had made a mistake for a year later, he plunged himself in maybe the darkest performance he's ever given as serial killer Early Grayce in Kalifornia. To replace him, a producer knew Bill Paxton who more than ably filled Vince's shoes.

The Looters was originally planned to open in the summer of 1992 but in light of the LA riots, the film was postponed. Oddly, Universal did not announce a scheduling change to media outlets until late July 1992 when the Daily News of Los Angeles and other papers reported that the movie's title had been changed to Trespass and a new ending would be added. The revised Zemeckis/Gale script moved the setting to the Rust Belt in East St. Louis, Illinois. According to Universal's press material and reviewers familiar with the shooting locations, Trespass was filmed in two separate 19th-century buildings, a Memphis brewery and the derelict Allied Mills in Cabbagetown, Atlanta. As Trespass opens, the screen is directed to a TV monitor showing a grainy video of some kind of transaction occurring between two motorists. One gets in the other's vehicle but is unexpectedly gunned down. Watching this footage is mob kingpin King James (Ice-T) and his sometime volatile associate, Savon (Ice Cube). Was this a heinous act committed by a rival gang? Meanwhile, Hill cuts to a fiery apartment complex where Don (William Sadler) and Vince (Bill Paxton) attempt to rescue a thief (Hal Landon Jr.) from succumbing to the flames. The man really doesn't want to be saved but before being engulfed, he presents the two Fort Smith, Arkansas firefighters with a newspaper clipping and a map containing the bearings of precious religious artifacts that he pilfered from a Greek Orthodox church more than fifty years ago. Don and Vince may be impractical about their odds but they decide to give the treasure hunt a shot, traversing across the Poplar Street Bridge to a ruinous, abandoned factory in East St. Louis. Inside a secure room, Vince is attacked from behind by homeless squatter, Bradlee (Art Evans), who makes the building his abode. Bradlee is then tied to a chair but won't stop babbling. Little do the three characters know that this is also the hideout for King James and his posse (at least for a weekend). King James is meeting with Goose (John Toles-Bey), the suspected gunman on the video, and King James's little brother, the junkie Lucky (De'voreaux White). Once it's determined by King James's entourage that Goose was the killer, the rival gang member is shot and descends through a skylight. Vince is seen and all hell breaks loose. As King James's men try to attack Vince, Don grabs Lucky and deploys him as a shield.

King James and Savon mean business.

For the rest of its run time, Trespass becomes the urban equivalent of a Hawksian Western. Like the confined areas that the protagonists find themselves in Rio Bravo, Don, Vince, Bradlee as well as Lucky are barricaded behind doors and walls to ward off King James and his collaborators. Freeman Davies's editing is consistently crisp and tight. The audience has a keen awareness of the heroes' claustrophobia and entrapment. As he learned from his mentor Sam Peckinpah, Hill's violence is almost elegant in its stylized tone, filming the actors in ultra slow-motion as they balletically grace through the air. Ice-T and Ice Cube have excellent on-screen chemistry together. King James is the boss but he has a reserved quality about him that lends to more methodical reasoning and philosophical introspection. Savon is more daring and would like to usurp King James but he has a certain amount of deference that holds him back. Family is of paramount importance to King James so he will get Lucky back at any or all costs. I did not recognize Glenn Plummer as the bespectacled sniper Luther and his performance departs from other roles he inhabited at that point in his acting career. Paxton's Vince really grows throughout the film so one sees hitherto unknown facets of his personality that burst out. If the film has a weak spot, it is that Sadler's Don is not written as well or explored to the point that we come to know him like we do the other main characters from both sides. Sadler does well with what he's provided but it's more of a one-note performance.

Trespass did not come out until the tail-end of 1992. Universal Pictures Chairman Tom Pollock made a terrible blunder when he decided to release it on Christmas Day. He reasoned that it would be part of Universal's strategy of "counter-programming," which turned out to be a big mistake. A number of critics cited the irony of its premiere, most notably Joan E. Vadeboncoeur of The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), who decried: "More inflammatory to moviegoers is the idea that the Christmas holiday, rife with peace and love, should be violated by this excessively violent motion picture." In an interview on this Blu-ray, producer Neil Canton claims that critics got too caught up with the parallels between the mayhem happening on the streets in reaction to the Rodney King incident and the violence depicted in Trespass. He maintains that this was never the filmmakers' intention and I take him for his word. To a small extent, this is accurate but the movie received a fair share of gloating reviews. Of sixty reviews of Trespass that I evaluated, I gather that over half of them were positive/favorable, while about half of the others fall in the rubric of mixed/unfavorable/negative. The problem was not bad press but timing. Granted, Universal did a decent job of getting Trespass to multiplexes across the country. Data obtained from Box Office Mojo indicates that it played in 1,022 theaters and ran second behind Hoffa among films opening in their first weekend (it placed seventh overall). However, Pollock and Universal should have known that it would have to compete against the likes of A Few Good Men, Aladdin, Home Alone 2, The Bodyguard, and Forever Young. A mid-autumn release date would have been far more auspicious for its prospects.

Trespass Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Trespass makes its Blu-ray debut worldwide courtesy of Shout Select (#24 in the sub-label's series) on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. Shout gives the main feature a typically sterling bitrate, with video streams that average 31995 kbps and a total bitrate for the disc of 38.02 Mbps. Following a letterboxed LaserDisc, Trespass was first issued on DVD in 1997 by GoodTimes Home Video with a snapper case and a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The disc was bare bones and Universal only modestly rectified that with a DVD of its own in 2004 that included just EPK-related extras. Universal did project Hill's film in its proper native aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and Shout has replicated that framing here. The print Universal gave Shout is in excellent condition and the transfer radiates a very clean appearance. Given the rather dismal milieu that almost all of Trespass is set, one would expect a murky appearance throughout. However, critics who viewed release prints of the films state that the picture had a fairly polished look. For instance, Michael Phillips, who then wrote for The San Diego Union-Tribune, discerned that "the imagery has a real sheen." Likewise, Malcolm Johnson of The Hartford Courant identified "sharp Technicolor images of [cinematographer] Lloyd Ahern." Shout does apply some grain removal, though. Contrast is often bold and perspiration glistens off Don and the characters' cheeks and forehead. This is not a heavy scrubbing effort by Shout as a nice sprinkling of grain is kept intact (see Screenshot #s 19 & 20) and is consistently well balanced.

Portions of Trespass are seen through the character of Video's (T.E. Russell) handheld camcorder. Reviewer Steve Murray of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that the print contained "a dose of grainy cinéma vérité" and that look has been largely preserved here. The "fuzzier footage" and "blurry videotape" of a gang execution that begins the film was immediately apparent to The Hartford Courant's Johnson and Shout has thankfully not attempted to wipe that away. In non-camcorder shots, the film is sometimes bright inside the tenement but levels haven't been amped up like they have been on other Shout releases. There is a kind of amber glow on faces (see #s 8, 17, and 18). Trespass also has a milky brown or light chocolate hue within some of the compositions. Colors are richly saturated (notice the beautiful turquoise on Raymond's trench coat and suit in #5.) Black levels are very deep without crush. There isn't any flickering, telecine wobbling, or other image stability issues. Generally, I think the color timing reflected on this transfer will please those who saw Trespass during its theatrical run of 1992-93. My score is 4.25.

Shout has finally added more scene selections than their standard dozen (sixteen are provided on this disc).

Trespass Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout! gives Trespass's original Dolby Stereo a DTS-HD Master 2.0 (1709 kbps, 24-bit) and a LPCM 2.0 (2304 kbps, 24-bit) tracks. I focused mainly on the DTS mix, which sounds crystal clear in enunciation and pitch. Originally, the movie was THX certified and mixed using Skywalker Sound so this was a quality recording to begin with. There is a wide dispersal of the f/x on the fronts and spatiality becomes quite wide at times. Ry Cooder stepped in once again for another composer's score whom Hill rejected. (Hill had rejected James Horner's music for Streets of Fire.) Original composer John Zorn was said to have written a very minimalist score comprised of banjos and a didgeridoo (an Australian wind instrument). (CD and digital editions are available under the album title, Filmworks II: Music for an Untitled Film by Walter Hill.) Cooder mimicks some of Zorn's beats but uses more stacatto and thumping electric guitars, which are sharply rendered on the Blu-ray.

Shout has supplied optional English SDH for the main feature.

Trespass Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• NEW "Fool's Gold" – An Interview with Actor William Sadler (12:32, 1080p)

• NEW "Born Losers" – An Interview with Co-Writer Bob Gale (13:15, 1080p)

• NEW "Wrongful Entry" – An Interview with Producer Neil Canton (13:50, 1080p)

• NEW "Gang Violation" – The Stunts of Trespass (6:10, 1080p)

• NEW "Trigger Happy" – The Weapons of Trespass (6:28, 1080p)

• Vintage Featurette: "Behind the Scenes of Trespass" (4:07, upconverted to 1080)

• Music Video (3:24, upconverted to 1080) -

• Deleted Scenes (4:49, upconverted to 1080)

• Theatrical Trailer (1:59, upconverted to 1080)

Trespass Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In a dismissive critique of Trespass, longtime New York Times reviewer Vincent Canby observed that Hill "has difficulty filling the running time." I couldn't disagree more as the film is a lean and efficient action thriller that doesn't contain any filler. Once Lucky gets captured, the narrative moves at a breakneck pace with a wonderful balance of shifting between King James's associates and the four other characters in their enclosed space. Shout Select delivers a marvelous transfer and well-amplified lossless audio. Shout has recycled all of Universal's standard bonus features and added five news ones. The interview with Bob Gale covers a lot of ground in a relatively short period and is arguably the best extra on the disc. The interview with Neil Canton is also very good, although I had a few disagreements with his observations. It would have been stupendous if Shout had gotten Walter Hill, Ice-T, and Ice Cube to record new interviews. Still, this is a worthy "Collector's Edition" and comes VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.