Puppy’s Hi Def Escapades

Let’s begin with a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! This despite there still being no heating in the shed and they forgot to feed me when the snow fell. Look at them; Chris and Phil in their cushy palace whilst there’s me, chained to a bit of wood, with only a laptop to keep me warm. My escape attempt didn’t go as planned either; Chris caught me and took a ruler to my frozen knuckles. I’ve learnt my lesson…

However, this month’s post sees Phil reward my loyalty to the website by providing me with my first ever Blu-ray review disc, Sin Nombre. Before I get to that, the first film, The Hurt Locker, is from my own private collection which I have now built into a structure to try and provide extra warmth within the shed. What’s also different about this month is, instead of reviewing films that I have already seen, both titles will be the first time I have seen either film. Awesome!

Please, if you read this, send coal or a mini-heater… or blankets. I lost a finger while typing this introduction, it snapped right off. Help me.

The Hurt Locker

I was excited to see this one as I’ve watched Jeremy Renner ever since he appeared in an episode of Angel in which he played a rather sinister vampire out for revenge. Next I saw him drugging, bonking and killing fellas in Dahmer which charted the horrific crimes of serial killer Jeffery Dahmer. Following those performances his career has now started to take off, and with suggested Academy Award nominations on the way for The Hurt Locker, this man’s future could be very lucrative indeed.

Onto the film and what it has to offer then. Right from the get go the opening menu gives you an idea of how the movie is going to play out; the surround sound kicks in, gunfire, explosions and dramatic overtures fill the air – it’s obvious there’s going to be no T&A (tits and ass) in this film!

The Hurt Locker follows Bravo Team, three highly trained bomb disposal experts on their remaining days in rotation for the army. Their job is one of the most dangerous the army has to offer. William James (Jeremy Renner) is the cowboy, the wild man of the team, transferred in after a remote bomb kills his predecessor. James must earn the trust of his team, but his wild ways of tackling his job not only risk his life but the lives of those around him. To be honest, you gotta have balls of steel to do a job like that.

Then we have JT Sandborn (Anthony Mackie) who’s very by the book. His emotions are so repressed that by the time he realises he’s at boiling point it’s far too late to stop the world of hurt coming his way. Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) is the youngest of the team and finds himself very much influenced by both of his commanding officers, torn between the book and the notion that sometimes you have to break the rules to survive in a war zone. These are the members of Bravo Team and the men you will be taking this horrific yet informative journey with.

Having a sister who’s served in Afghanistan these past six months I found it quite a harrowing film to watch as from the outset the film takes on a documentary style ‘shaky-cam’ approach which puts you in the shoes of a fourth member, a bystander who can but watch as events unfold for these men in the situations they encounter. It’s a very tense film, director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal doing an excellent job at placing the viewer in the middle of the action, putting us in the shoes of that unseen fourth team member so we feel the stresses of disarming a bomb, the danger that can be had just by doing your job in enemy territory, the locals being hostile to your presence and occasionally setting up ambushes.

The film also tackles loss on both sides which is something that normally gets missed in war films from the US studios. Usually it’s a very black and white view where the army is the be all and end all, their loss is felt, but when suicide bombers are not just taking the lives of troops but their own people too in markets or villages, it hits home that we aren’t the only ones losing loved ones. There are casualties of war that are caught in the crossfire on both sides. It’s a pivotal moment in the film when you realise this and that’s when the wild man exterior of William James begins to crack and his team start to accept him.

It’s a cracking film that will have you on edge from the get go and will keep you there as you walk the same footsteps as Bravo Team. The countdown of their days left on duty almost feels ominous, as though it’s counting down to some disaster and as the clock ticked I really started to feel that the members of Bravo Team might not make it through to the end of their rotation, that they would become another figure, another statistic of the war dead.

To find out if they do, I highly suggest that you pick up a copy of the film to find out. The Blu-ray is another class act… I was hoping to report some faults about this disc but I can’t! God dammit! Oh, but I can… I’ve just remembered there is a point during a rather tense scene about 57 minutes in where a man appears to wander in to shot in the background; he definitely should not be there. Keep your eyes peeled and have a game of ‘Where’s The Afghan Now?’ Kinda like ‘Where’s Wally’ but with an Afghan…

Special Features:

• Behind The Scenes: This was the only feature I watched all the way through; it features a few behind the scene glimpses of how The Hurt Locker was filmed, plus Cast and Crew interviews and of course some clips from the movie itself.
• Interviews: This is basically interview segments that were cut from the Behind the Scenes supplement. It’s rather annoying as the clips are set up in such a way that after the chosen section of the interview has played it cuts to black and plays a different line. It makes it very difficult to get into what the actors are trying to say about their time in the Middle East.
• Backstage: A rather dull montage of people walking along filming the action.
• Photo Gallery: Cast stills.

Tech Specs:

Release Date: 28the December 2009
Runtime: 130 mins
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio Surround 5.1
Transfer: AVC-1080p
Region: B (Locked)

Ratings:

Movie: 4.5 stars – An awesome look at what our troops go through fighting a war on our behalf despite the implications and lack of support from folks back home. The effects are amazing and the performances and characters are all top notch from the cocky git Will James to the impressionable Owen Eldridge. It took me out of my Christmas funk where I hated every film I saw over the festive period – thank you The Hurt Locker for renewing my love for film.

Picture: 3.5 stars – To begin with I wasn’t impressed, I thought the film was overly grainy and the colours were bland. It wasn’t until I realised that the myth of my youth, when drawing pictures of the beach… sand is not bright yellow. It was a hard thing to come to terms with, but the greys, blacks and blues that make up the majority of this film were a sight to behold offset against the flesh tones of the cast members involved. Thumbs up for this one but I wouldn’t use it as a reference disc.

Sound: 4.5 stars – During an ambush scene I literally lost it as gun fire burst into action from behind my right ear, a deafening crack as Eldridge and co. came under fire while trying to do their job. Even the Optimum logo made me poop a little as the sound blasted from the speakers! I had intended to watch the film on a higher setting than usual but the DTS-HD was so crisp and loud the speakers were turned down swiftly and, like the film, it puts you squarely in the middle of a battlefield.

Extras: 2 stars – There’s nothing particularly stunning about the extras on the disc. I don’t know whether it was planned but the US edition of this disc features a commentary track by director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal which is missing from the UK version.

Sin Nombre

Time for another little story! There was a time when I hated the World Cinema section of Amazon/HMV with a fiery passion. My poor ADD-addled brain just couldn’t keep up with the words on screen and while concentrating so intently on keeping up with the story, I’d miss some of the direction and imagery on display. I have been quoted as saying, “If you want to read, buy an f’’in’ book!”

This however changed in the summer of 2007 at a little love of mine called FrightFest, which coincidentally is where I met Phil for the first time. He came up and introduced himself and as an emotionally retarded and socially inept geek, I yelped, then ran and cried in a corner for the next 3 hours or so. Stranger Danger!! (Or was that 2008…? I might have met Phil in 2008; it was so traumatic I’ve tried to suppress the memory, obviously…) However, I returned in time to see my first true World Cinema love, The Orphanage and since then I’ve never looked back, always finding time to give World Cinema the benefit of the doubt.

So into the fray we go with my first ever proper ‘review’ disc for Chris & Phil Present, Sin Nombre by writer/director Cary Fukunaga (Yes, I did chortle a little at the last name).

The film is a tale of two sides: on one we have Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) and her family who are preparing to take the long and dangerous journey on a freight train known as ‘The Beast’ in an effort to illegally cross the US border. On the other we have Casper (Edgar Flores) and 12 year old Smiley. Casper leads a violent existence in a gang, a gang whose reach extends to the border itself.

The first 38 minutes concentrates on Casper and Smiley, an introduction to gang life from the bottom up as Smiley gets the living daylights kicked out of him as part of the initiation process. Casper then walks Smiley through the final steps to becoming a member of the gang – he must kill a rival gang member. However Casper has a detour to make and ends up screwing his secret girlfriend.

Let’s just say that the gang find out about said girlfriend and Casper feels the need to re-evaluate his family/gang life. Taken on a mission to rob the hundreds of illegals on the freight train by the leader of the gang Lil’ Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), this pivotal turning point brings both parties together for the first time and Casper finds himself parted from Smiley, knowing his actions will result in him becoming an enemy of the family/gang he held so dear.

This is the moment where the film becomes something special; it’s not a love story, it’s about two worlds colliding and overcoming the odds to survive as Casper decides the only way he can escape the reach of the gang is by crossing the US border with Sayra and her family, helping them navigate the obstacles on the way.

There are moments when I felt Cary Fukunaga wanted to push the envelope when it came to the violence, to make it somewhat more shocking than intended but each opportunity he had, he wimped out. I don’t know if it’s the horror fan in me but I felt he could have attempted to push a little further to shock the audience. Then again, this film isn’t about gang violence; it’s the age old story of bad boy done good but set in a very real environment and situation that exists today. It’s also a look at the pivotal choices one makes and how they change our course in life. The poster/cover art would have you believe it’s about gang violence but that’s just a by-product to further Casper’s story and his motivation to leap over the border.

It’s a fairly moving piece which reaches a rather gut-wrenching climax which I saw coming a mile away, but it still packed the punch of Tyson going for the gut. Both Flores and Gaitan put in amazing performances that have critics the world over showering this film with praise, and rightly so. Sin Nombre teeters on the cusp of being something brilliant but for me it didn’t quite live up to its reputation.It could lose 10 minutes or so from the first act but it’s well worth the watch though and those of a more sentimental mind will probably fall in love with the film.

If you’re not sure if you’ll like the content of Sin Nombre, or if you have seen the film and live in the UK then check out Which Way Home, a moving documentary that charts the journey of children who have attempted or succeeded in making Sayra’s journey to the US. You may actually see some shots from the film in this documentary and also get a glimpse of some of the horror stories that Fukunaga had to research when writing the film. It’s a moving piece and compliments Sin Nombre oh so well; I watched it directly after listening to the director’s commentary.

Special Features:

• Director’s Commentary – Cary Fukunaga & Amy Kaufman (Producer): This is actually a very informative piece and is actually the first director’s commentary that I’ve listened to all the way through. Both Cary and Amy guide us through some of the locations and the restrictions of shooting in Mexico. What the actors went through during various scenes, things I hadn’t appreciated first time around on screen, I understood as Cary took me through his ideas. There are a few places where it did get a little ‘meh’ but they’re swiftly swept under the rug as the banter between the two continues. Well worth a listen.
• Deleted Scenes: A nice addition to the film as they would have added something to the film in some cases. Did one of the scenes actually imply that Sayra may have been a muff diver? I picked that up but whether it was my dirty mind or not, I don’t know. There’s also a scene here which would have explained Smiley’s radical 180 turnaround on his friend, siding with the gang over Casper. It shows him surrounded by ‘family’ and sharing his first kiss with a fast ‘n’ loose young lady. The rest however didn’t add an awful lot but they are worth seeing just to get a glimpse into parts of the story that were removed from the film which could have made it flow a little bit better. The deleted scenes are not shown in VC-1 HD, they are MPEG Standard def. and the quality varies from clip to clip.

Tech Specs:

Release Date: 1st February 2010
Runtime: 102 mins
Audio: Dolby TRUE HD / Dolby Digital 2.0
Language: Spanish with English Subtitles
Transfer:VC-1 / 1080p
Region: B

Ratings:

Movie: 3.5 stars – A moving (when it gets going) tale of survival, adventure and the price people must pay along the way. It’s a fine little romp that has moments of sheer excellence when it comes to delivery but could have done with the addition of a few extra scenes to help us understand Smiley’s lust for revenge against his friend.

Picture: 4 stars – From the get go Sin Nombre offers a steady crisp and colourful take on the landscapes Mexico has to offer. The contrast between slum and countryside is just amazing to look at. It also helps that the director seemed to take advantage of what nature had to offer. You’ll want to go and explore that countryside if it wasn’t for the gang members using makeshift guns made out of pipes! Not reference material, but it will make you sit up and take note.

Sound: 3 stars – Sin Nombre is very much shoot from the hip. The majority of the sound comes from the front sound stage. It’s only when Sayra and her family first encounter the freight train that the rear speakers kick in and give you a real sense that this thing the family will be travelling on is DANGEROUS. I do wish that the sounds of Mexico had pulled me into the film further but the surround failed to pack a suitable punch. However after being in the warzone that was The Hurt Locker, whatever film followed on from that was never going to stand a chance in the sound department.

Extras: 3 Stars – It’s all down to the commentary track on this one. As above, it’s informative and entertaining to hear the writer/director and producer reminisce about locations, scenes and the drastic change from producing a $15 million production to the low budget realm of Sin Nombre.

Clifford Green (www.thedogatemywookie.com)