Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Violet & Daisy Blu-ray Movie Review

Hit and run.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 22, 2013

Hanna offered Saoirse Ronan as a single minded killing machine, in a film which only slightly masked its fairy tale ambience. Ronan is back as yet another professional assassin in Violet & Daisy, and the film once again has a certain playfully childlike quality, but the tone of this film is resolutely different than Ronan’s earlier effort. Violet & Daisy marks the first directorial effort by Oscar winning writer Geoffrey Fletcher, who burst into mainstream prominence by adapting Precious for the screen. It’s probably too facile to accuse Fletcher of foisting a different kind of preciousness off on the audience in Violet & Daisy, but there’s no denying this film has a certain twee quality. And considering its heroines’ level of general naïvete, some cynics might be tempted to pun horribly and say the film really might have been better titled Twee-dledum and Twee-dledee. (Some of you are probably scouring the Yellow Pages for a professional hitman to take me out right now. I fully understand.) Violet & Daisy has some fun elements, but it’s a film that is weirdly meandering and tonally uncertain of itself. Is this supposed to be a satire? A Tarantino-esque journey through the twisted and monologue filled lives of people who ironically just happen to kill for a living? Or is it merely a fable, a gussied up piece of folklore that invites us into a magical-realist world where nothing is at is seems, therefore nothing really matters very much. Violet & Daisy is highlighted by some impressive performances, and it also offers one of the final appearances by James Gandolfini before his untimely passing a few months ago, a fact that will no doubt invite some curious onlookers who would probably not otherwise give this film a second glance.

The film starts with a sequence that is part Quentin Tarantino, part Brothers Grimm, as Violet (Alexis Bledel, Sin City) and Daisy (Saoirse Ronan, Atonement) seem to be nuns who are delivering “righteous” pizza pies. Violet is regaling Daisy with a joke about a doctor who sleeps with his patients, a joke that ultimately has a rather amusing punchline which seems to zing right over Daisy’s head. In the meantime, it’s revealed that Violet and Daisy are not in fact sisters of the cloth, or even pizza deliverers, but are instead paid hitmen (women?) who have automatic weapons concealed in the pizza boxes. A scene of implied carnage takes place (very little actual violence is shown onscreen during this film, one of the ways it actually departs from the typical Tarantino template), and we are thrust rather forcefully into this bizarre world where two very young girls evidently have little problem dispatching a roomful of thugs.

This scene of mayhem is followed by an equally odd scene where the two girls play patty-cake in the looming shadows of Manhattan. It’s obvious that Daisy especially is a child-woman, even though it’s soon divulged that she has entered the ranks of “adulthood” by turning 18. Violet is obviously the more experienced assassin, and she seems to be a mentor of sorts to Daisy. Both of the girls have an obsession with a pop icon named Barbie Sunday, who also has a clothing line that the two girls lust after. Though they initially talk about taking a vacation from all the killing, a new Sunday dress and an offer of a quick and easy job that pays well proves too much to resist, and they meet with their handler (Danny Trejo in a quick cameo) to get the specs on the job.

So far, so good, actually, as Fletcher crafts a weird but almost believable fairy tale of two bubble gum chomping assassinettes who segue seamlessly from ruthless killing to more familiar teen territory of idol worship. But it’s at this point that Violet & Daisy begins to show some of its seams. The girls infiltrate the apartment of their mark and promptly fall asleep. When they awaken, they find out that their target (James Gandolfini) is already there and is waiting for them (though he, too, has dozed off). Thereby begins the bulk of this film’s lurching back and forth, where the girls suddenly find it’s not so easy to kill someone if you actually spend a minute or two talking to them.

The bulk of the dramatic weight tends to fall on Daisy’s shoulders, since Violet discovers she’s out of bullets and heads off to find some (actually getting drawn into a bit of a sidebar that adds little to the film). Daisy is left to deal with her ostensible hit, slowly developing an emotional attachment to him, especially when their combined father-daughter issues spill out and they (of course) realize they’re fulfilling aching holes in each other’s psyches. A number of tangents intrude, including a would be hit by another group out to kill the same man, as well as the girls’ real boss showing up late in the film to demand that the job be done stat—or else.

Part of what ails Violet & Daisy is that we know little about the girls. They’re cartoons, really, or perhaps more appropriately cardboard cutouts from a popup fairy tale book. Since we have no real emotional hook into either of them, it really doesn’t matter to us whether or not they end up killing their target or indeed if they end up getting killed themselves. What does work in the film is its rather melancholic, bittersweet ambience, one highlighted by the incredibly doleful eyes of both Gandolfini and Ronan. Ronan played a very smart assassin in Hanna brilliantly, and here she does similarly fine work with a character who may not exactly be dumb, but who has a certain childlike naïvete which makes her seemingly ill equipped to be pursuing this particular line of work.

Fletcher invests the film with whimsical touches, but they often seem either too obvious or just as likely too random. The girls arrive at their jobs on a tricycle, which one assumes is shorthand for their childish demeanors. Later, the trike is missing and they seem to have grown up a little, an aspect highlighted by a good deed Daisy attempts to do in the film’s closing moments. Other elements, like the aforementioned arrival of the girls’ boss, just come out of thin air (almost literally in this case), and do little to advance the story or provide any emotional impact. The film does succeed largely on a certain arch quality as revealed in the girls’ bantering back and forth, but the only really touching moments come from Gandolfini, who was able to communicate more with those deep, knowing eyes than a roomful of Oscar winning scenarists could with a sheaf of clever dialogue.

Violet & Daisy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Violet & Daisy is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cinedigm with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. According to the IMDb, Violet & Daisy was filmed with the Arricam LT, a compact camera which allows for more flexible setups than more typically bulky outfits, and that certainly seems to be borne out by some of the extremely up close and personal shots Fletcher and his DP Vanja Cernjul get throughout the film. These shots reveal really impeccable levels of fine detail, whether they be the small pock marks in part of Gandolfini's face, or the tiny needlework in the nuns' cowls. Colors are accurate and nicely saturated (the film has not been aggressively color timed, a rather refreshing change of pace). Especially impressive are the cool blue eyes of the protagonists (see screenshot 2 for a great example), as well as the beautifully sun dappled exteriors around Manhattan. (One final scene appears to play out in front of rear projection, which has a curiously—and perhaps intentionally—fake quality to it.) The elements have no damage whatsoever and the image remains clear and stable throughout, with no compression artifacts of any note.

Violet & Daisy Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Violet & Daisy's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 springs to life rather nicely during the film's use of some nice source cues, but otherwise this is largely a dialogue driven affair that keeps almost all of the sonic activity in the front channels. The opening sequence with its bursts of gunfire is a notable exception, as are a couple of similar other moments later in the film. Fidelity is excellent and the mix is extremely well prioritized.

Violet & Daisy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Poster Slideshow (1080p)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:00)

Violet & Daisy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Violet & Daisy certainly deserves an A for Ambition, but it might also deserve a D for being a bit too Daffy for its own good. Fletcher could have coasted on his Precious Oscar win, and so kudos are in order that he decided to take a chance. But that still doesn't excuse some of Violet & Daisy's excesses, especially when there's not enough of an emotional hook to balance the whimsy. Ronan and Gandolfini are excellent, however, and the film is unusual enough that those who are sick to death of cookie cutter entertainments may well want to check this out just for its odd factor alone. While there's very little supplemental material here, the Blu-ray's technical merits are first rate and this disc comes Recommended.