Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

VANish Blu-ray Movie Review

Not Your Average Road Trip

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 21, 2015

In 1996, Robert Rodriguez published Rebel Without a Crew, in which he recounted the making of his breakthrough film, El Mariachi, at an initial production cost of just $7000. VANish, the first feature film by writer, director, producer and co-star Bryan Bockbrader, carries a special acknowledgment to Rodriguez, which Bockbrader has said is entirely because of the detailed advice provided by the director's book. Perhaps even more important than such practical elements as the appendix that Rodriguez entitled "The Ten Minute Film Course" is the can-do spirit that animates the whole of Rodriguez's account, which is the opposite of that found among so many who inhabit the fringes of show business bemoaning their lack of opportunity. Rodriguez created his opportunity simply by doing the work: writing, shooting, editing, applying his imagination to transform limitations into creative solutions. Bockbrader brought the same initiative to VANish, and the result, while its influences are easy to spot, is startlingly fresh and entertaining.

The limitation that Bockbrader imposed on himself as both writer and director was to set all of the film's action inside a plumber's van (hence the capitalization of the title's first three letters, VANish). This becomes more visually interesting than it initially sounds, because the van ends up with four occupants, with shifting loyalties and escalating conflicts, so that the dramatic possibilities expand until the very end of the film. The van travels a long road, allowing Bockbrader to vary both the lighting and the view out the windows (some of it stock footage), and several additional players enter and exit the vehicle along the way. With just a little imagination, Brockbrader has turned a van's interior into a busier place than the single setting of many a great stage play.

After a teaser involving an older couple (Joe Davis and Hope Diaz) who have their tryst interrupted, the van's initial two passengers are Jack (Austin Abke), a former soldier in Afghanistan whose father owns the vehicle, and Max (Bockbrader), a cocksure loudmouth, whom Jack tolerates because they have known each other since they were kids. In VANish's most obvious nod to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, the two of them chatter about smart phones, Jack's ex-girlfriend, Jasmine (Denise Dorado), and other "guy" stuff with a kind of random intensity that turns out not to be random at all. Then they reach their destination and, like Jules and Vincent, "get into character" (although their characters aren't nearly as impressive or intimidating as the professionals memorably played by Samuel L. Jackson and John Travota).

Not long afterward, the van has two more passengers: Shane (Adam Guthrie), who served with Jack in Iraq and is either a bit slow or suffering from some form of PTSD (possibly both), and Emma (Maiara Walsh), who is the "odd man out" on this ride, and not just because she is a woman. She is also the only passenger who isn't there voluntarily. A college student, Emma has been kidnapped for a $5 million ransom to be paid by her wealthy father, Carlos (Danny Trejo), even though she assures the three young men that Carlos won't pay, because she and her father have been estranged for years. Jack, clearly the mastermind, thinks otherwise. When Carlos calls the number from which Jack sent him Emma's ransom video, Jack instructs the furious dad to meet them the next day at a remote spot outside the town of Barstow.

But getting there is, as one character, accurately dubs it, a highway to hell, punctuated by arguments, threats, fights, conspiracies, secrets revealed and no small amount of bloodletting. Max is the obvious troublemaker, because he can neither sit still nor keep quiet. If he senses that someone has a sore spot, Max jabs at it. If things are too quiet, Max throws a beer can at someone's head. If Emma seems too relaxed, Max points a gun at her head. Where Jack remains focused on the ransom, Max seems to care more about the thrill of being an outlaw, to his partners' growing frustration. But as heat, exhaustion and uncertainty wear down all four, Max turns out to be only the most obvious lunatic in the group—and possibly the least extreme of them all.

Much of VANish plays like a black comedy that recalls Rodriguez's original From Dusk Till Dawn, especially the first half during the Gecko brothers' twisted road trip. One of the film's best sequences involves a California highway patrolman, Officer Darrow, played by horror legend Tony Todd, who stops the group for a busted tail light, then takes his sweet time running the license plate, jabbering with the occupants and generally entertaining himself on what is otherwise probably a boring day. (According to Brockbrader's commentary, Todd improvised extensively.) Meanwhile, the four occupants sit tensely, desperately trying to act normal, hands poised on concealed weapons, scanning Darrow's face for any sign of suspicion. It's an accomplished set piece of which any writer/director could be proud, let alone a first-timer.

Brockbrader demonstrates an even more mischievous streak when he has the group check into a motel for the night, leaving their vehicle empty. No sooner are they gone than two masked thieves break in, but they postpone a thorough rifling through the van's contents while one of them holds forth extensively, in subtitled Spanish, on how the white people who own this vehicle deserve their fate because of how Mexicans are treated in America. Maybe if they had talked less, they could have completed their task before being interrupted by another unexpected intruder.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, all the world's a van, and all the people merely passengers. They have their entrances and exits, and some are messier than others.

VANish Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The cinematographer on VANish was Colby Oliver, who has been a gaffer and camera operator on various shorts and TV shows and, like most of the film's young cast and crew, is working hard to advance in the industry. The film was shot on an Arri Alexa, a professional quality camera that the production was able to obtain at the last minute for reasons explained in the commentary, even though the rental fees were far beyond their limited means. Thanks to the Alexa's superior quality and what Brockbrader calls "the magic of color correction" in post-production, VANish looks far more professional than one would expect for a film shot for no money in thirteen days. MPI/Dark Sky Films' 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, which was presumably sourced directly from digital files, is similarly impressive.

The image is sharp, crisp and detailed, except where the contrast has been deliberately intensified to convey the intense heat of the California sun, at which point highlights are sometimes blown out. (Brockbrader points out one specific scene where changing the color and contrast allowed him to convert a sequence shot in L.A. under blue skies into one that appeared to be shot in a hot, sandy wasteland.) The color palette is consistently warm, and the copious blood in the film's latter half is rusty red. The black levels in night scenes are appropriately dark, although there is rarely any scene that isn't illuminated to some degree.

VANish runs a taut 79 minutes, and MPI has used a BD-25, achieving an average bitrate of 21.98 Mbps, with peaks well above 30 Mbps in scenes of intense action. Especially with digital origination, and given the strategically placed still shots in which characters hold forth on one subject or another, this kind of average rate is perfectly acceptable. Compression, banding and other artifacts were not observed.

VANish Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

VANish's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, surrounds the viewer with the sensation of a moving vehicle, with the sound field shifting subtly depending on the camera's perspective (driver's seat, rear of the vehicle, outside looking in, etc.). The surrounds go quiet when the van comes to a stop, but individual actions stray to the left or right. The dialogue is very clear and frequently very important. Michael Tuller, who has contributed synth programming for such films as The Social Network, did the score and also supervised the soundtrack selections, which include an original song written and performed by star Maiara Walsh over the closing credits.

VANish Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Actor/Writer/Director Bryan Bockbrader and Actor Adam Guthrie: This is a free-wheeling, energetic and informative discussion about the making of VANish—a title suggested by Bockbrader's mother, in one of many small revelations. The overriding tone is one of disbelief that the makeshift team managed to accomplish so much with so little, with boosts along the way from cult heroes like Tony Todd and Danny Trejo, both of whom were last-minute recruits. Luck played its part too. They were able to afford an Arri Alexa only because the rental company had no Red cameras available, having leased them all to Michael Bay's crew to shoot Transformers: Age of Extinction. So, just as with rental cars, they gave Bockbrader a free upgrade. (For this reason alone, Bay is thanked in the end credits.)



• Blooper Reel (1080p; 2.39:1; 8:10): Everything from malfunctioning props to Tony Todd's weirder improvs to the van breaking down for real on an L.A. freeway.



• Alternate Endings (1080p; 2.39:1; 9:26): Three different resolutions are included. All of them build on suggestions contained earlier in the script, and one can imagine the appeal of each one on the page. But the ending chosen for the finished product is the best fit for the rhythm of the film. Bockbrader discusses his choice in the commentary



• Trailer (1080p; 2.39:1; 1:32): The trailer walks a fine line between revealing plot elements and omitting their connections.



• Additional Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for Starry Eyes, The House at the End of Time, Summer of Blood and Late Phases: Night of the Lone Wolf, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

VANish Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The list of Tarantino and Rodriguez imitators is long and largely undistinguished. Brockbrader stands out from the pack because he didn't imitate what these two famous partners-in-crime actually did. Instead, he studied how they did it, then applied those lessons to an original story idea that could have easily worn out its welcome after the first act, if its writer/director hadn't kept pushing it in new and surprising directions. VANish isn't deep or profound, but it's lively and sometimes even surprising. That's enough to recommend it, especially in this solid Blu-ray presentation.