Trouble Is My Business Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Trouble Is My Business Blu-ray Movie Review

Noir on a Nickel.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman June 12, 2018

Trouble Is My Business is a modern throwback to the classic black-and-white noir detective movies of yore. It's been crafted with lower-end digital photography and budget digital backdrops that rob it of the critical texturing and immersive authenticity necessary to really make the movie pop, at least texturally; it feels flat and plays to its budget. It looks like a hybrid of a silky-smooth soap opera intermixed with the budget-minded drivel from The Asylum. It rises in quality from both, thankfully, in large part thanks to its strict, unflinching adherence to lovingly recreated classic cliché. The film embraces type and peeks in every noir nook and cranny in the book, ensuring that each pulpy visual and all aural components that have made the genre a favorite are somehow worked into the production. But there's a downside: the movie is a little overdone, a lot overlong, and impossibly lacking identity, though one can argue its identity is its lack thereof, its absolute strict, modern recreation of something old and treasured. It's watchable and serviceable but there are countless other, better, similar movies out there that don't feel as forced and superfluous and that boast better production values, too, even if they were made many decades ago.

Roland Drake (Tom Konkle) is a disgraced detective whose good name and reputation have taken a serious hit in the press. He's being evicted from his office and the future looks bleak. Then he meets Katherine Montemar, heir to a great fortune. Her father has gone missing and she wants Drake's help. He's intrigued by the job -- and her body -- and takes both. But the following morning, Katherine turns up missing, presumably her blood soaking Drake's sheets. He's soon visited by another Montemar, Katherine's sister Jennifer (Brittney Powell), who implores the detective to find both her father and her sister. Drake, ever the lady's man, accepts, and quickly becomes obsessed with Jennifer. Soon, he finds himself tangled in a dark, dangerous web of intrigue, mystery, and murder that pushes him to his limits as a man and a detective.

The saving grace is that the filmmakers don't seem to take their product at all seriously, at least not in any effort to deviate from the driving force point of recreating the past. The entirety of its purpose seems to be to seep itself into genre convention, and there's so much lathering in familiar moments, population by cut-out characters, and dialogue that seems pulled form a gumshoe noir handbook that the film's various other shortcomings -- most of them technical -- occasionally disappear into the background. But the counter is that the film absolutely lacks identity. It's so conventional, routine, and rote -- down to the finest detail, the most inconsequential line of dialogue, the most essential shot composition -- that there's no distinguishing marker, no break from the monotony to signal the movie's own character. So Trouble Is My Business is a classic catch-22. It pays homage to the classics of yore, but it's so steeped in genre convention that it never accomplishes a single thing in its own name. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up for each viewer to decide.

Trouble Is My Business suffers from an overextended runtime with countless pace-killing scenes that draw out a movie that would work better as a more tightly edited film that would push it more towards a fun genre lampoon. As it is, its mass makes the movie feel as if it's trying to be substantial when there's little substance of note. The pacing occasionally kills momentum, overwhelms some of the fun little touches, winks, and nods that otherwise contribute to a would-be agreeable movie. The actors are enthusiastic and the filmmakers obviously know their stuff, but the movie draws attention away from its high points when it should be celebrating its successes. And as the movie drags, its technical shortcomings grow ever more obvious, which include a flat, soap opera-like digital sheen and some low-end digital backgrounds that overwhelm rather than compliment most every scene in which they are most obvious.

Trouble Is My Business Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

This two-disc set of Trouble Is My Business contains the film in both black and white and color on two separate 1080p Blu-ray discs. While the movie is not fully attractive thanks to the flat digital appearance and sore-thumb visual effects, the technical presentation is largely fine within its low budget constraints. Essential textures are good. Close-ups reveal sharply defined skin and the piles of makeup laid atop. Clothes, jewelry, high end furnishings and accents around the Montemar house enjoy very good clarity. Colors are well saturated, lacking the nuance and complexity of more refined productions but presenting basics with firm command. Black levels, obviously essential to the film, hold fairly deep with some exceptions that push a little more shallow than ideal. Skin tones appear accurate.

The image suffers through some macroblocking and banding, both of which can be severe at times. Flickering at the 19:30 mark proves distracting. At the 46:40 marker, the digital background looks like it's about to disintegrate. Aliasing creeps in at the 35 minute mark, encircling the band around the detective's hat. Such are just one-off examples of issues the creep in for the duration, some more substantial and bothersome than others, most of which can be attributed to the lower-end source.

The black and white image, like the color image, lacks the necessary texture to really pull the viewer into the movie from a visual perspective. It's the same image, just processed to black and white in post. Essentially, the color review holds, minus the coloring. The grayscale is fine and the movie works better in black and white, though some image tweaking in post might have made both presentations a fair bit better. As it is, both struggle to hold visual interest or compliment the movie beyond the building block noir essentials.

Trouble Is My Business Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Trouble Is My Business features a fairly basic Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, which is identical across both the color and black and white presentations. Although it is encoded with a multichannel configuration, there's little activity in the surround channels. Essential elemental clarity is fine, though, with music and effects alike finding enough authenticity to satisfy. Front-side spacing is likewise just fine, with good elemental reach out towards the farther edges along the forward three channels. There is no substantial low end heft of note. Dialogue presents with positive and firm front-center positioning, good verbal clarity, and solid prioritization above any competing elements.

Trouble Is My Business Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

All that's included is the film's trailer (1080p, 2:04), presented in color on the color disc and in black and white on the black and white disc. There are only three chapter stops for the entire movie (one of which jumps ahead past the opening logo and the next to the end of the movie) and the top menu offers only "Play Movie" and "Play Trailer" options. No in-film "pop-up" menu is included. Subtitles must be toggled on or off in-film via the subtitle button on the remote.

Trouble Is My Business Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Trouble Is My Business is an impressive enough feat under the budget constraints that are obvious within every shot thanks largely to the obvious passion that went into recreating the classic pulpy noir films of old, just on digital rather than on film. The film's success is dependent on one's perception of it. Watching it as a small budget and kinda cheesy homage to all things noir detective films, it can be a fun little excursion. As an effort in crafting a serious genre entry, it's a failure. Choose the former (which seems to be what he filmmakers want, anyway) and enjoy, though various warts (visual effects, pacing) still get in the way. Newcomers to the genre should go back and start with the classics, but pulp-noir veterans should find this an agreeable endeavor, albeit one that is a little overlong for what it is. Random Media's Blu-ray release offers decent enough video if one can live with the source's various flaws. Audio is passable and supplements are limited to a trailer. Worth a look for anyone who enjoys this genre.