Reindeer Games (2000/Miramax/Lionsgate Blu-ray)/War Of The Arrows (2011/Well Go USA Blu-ray w/DVD)/Wyatt Earp’s Revenge (2011/Sony DVD)

 

Picture: B-/B & B-/C     Sound: B-/B- & C+/C+     Extras: C-/C/C-     Main Programs: D/B/C

 

 

The action film as a genre began before it became a genre via Westerns, Crime films and Thrillers, not to mention a certain sequence in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin in 1925.  As Hollywood has worn action films thin, it has tried to find other directions to take them, but even the best filmmakers can hit sour notes.

 

 

The great John Frankenheimer attempted to do a crime thriller with the able Ben Affleck in 2000 with Reindeer Games, but even in the Director’s cut now out on Blu-ray, it was surprisingly poor and just never adds up.  Affleck is an ex-con who immediately starts to get into new trouble by impersonating a cellmate out of desperation, only for what seems like a bad idea that could work backfiring badly.  He liked his buddy’s girlfriend (Charlize Theron) and also finds himself dealing with her sociopathic criminal brother (Gary Sinise), but it is very predictable, dull and also has a very bad set of twists that render the film useless.  Even appearances by Danny Trejo, Clarence Williams III, Donal Logue and Dennis Farina can’t save it.

 

Frankenheimer had not exactly lost his touch, having just made the underrated spy thriller Ronin (1996, reviewed elsewhere on this site) previously as a personal comeback of sorts, but Writer Ehren Kruger does not know what he is doing and proved this later with his scripts for the first two Transformers sequels, inept thriller Skeleton Key, U.S. Ring remakes, problematic Brothers Grimm for Terry Gilliam and awful (and awfully goofy) werewolf dud Blood & Chocolate.  He is the problem here and the blame for the failure of this to work.  It was a big disappointment to start with, has aged very badly and is actually painful to watch with mistake after mistake.  Try it out if you have immense patience and see, but you are better off skipping it.

 

Extras include Original Theatrical Cut Alternative Scenes, a Behind-The-Scenes Featurette and a feature length audio commentary track by Frankenheimer about how he made the film which is much more interesting than watching it.  You can tell he was clearly trying to make this work, but it is a dud.

 

 

Most of the bad action films from Hollywood since have usually been so because they were not even trying to be worth seeing, something we could never accuse Frankenheimer of.  This is one reason why more U.S. audiences have turned to Asian Cinema for action and though many of those films have their own clichés, formula, predictability and issues, they do occasionally offer some pleasant surprises.

 

For me, one of the biggest has been Kim Han-min’s War Of The Arrows (2011) which at first could have been just another costumer with “Wi-Fu” martial arts, overproduction and boredom, but that is not the case.  Instead, this drama set in 1623 as Manchuria again invades Korea, the invaders take slaves as they rape, kill, burn and terrorize everyone except some men in the village who intend to fight back.

 

This includes Nam-ji (Park Hae-ji) who is a loner of sorts and an ace in the use of bow and arrows.  He has longtime friends from the village who are too and enough of them get together to slowly fight back.  I will not ruin the surprises on the side, though the costumes, sets, locations and performances are better than most of these films have offered since the cycle started and the action in the film is constant, impressive and that is down to the use of arrows which is some of the most interesting and spectacular in decades, possibly in cinema history.

 

This runs a rich, non-stop 122 minutes and delivers like nothing I have seen in any genre this film covers in a while.  A thoroughly professional, grade-A, top rate production, it proves once again (as past films, including the underrated thriller 301/302 have shown) that Korean cinema is as vital, rich and energetic as any in the world right now.  Well Go USA managed to pick this gem up over the majors and if I were them, I’d be thrilled.

 

Extras include Highlights, Trailers and a Behind The Scenes featurette, but I wish there had been more because it is amazing and best of all, impossible to remake and not botch.

 

 

Finally we have a newer Western entry, Michael Feifer’s Wyatt Earp’s Revenge (2011) which itself is part of a strange retro-cycle of Westerns obviously made on HD video and while most of those that I have suffered through have been cheesy, weak and brought the genre to a regressive state that is the wrong side of its pre-genre/pre-Stagecoach full-fledged genre days, this at least has a few good moments.  Val Kilmer is an older Earp, referencing the well-liked Tombstone (though he was not the same character there) telling his story in flashback.  That unfortunately undermines the impact of the drama and backfires on this somewhat ambitious production.

 

I was hoping for more surprises here too, but this falls flat and despite some interesting casting (including singer Tracy Adkins) that makes sense, it does not add up or give us anything new, so only hardcore genre fans will enjoy it.  There is one extra in the featurette Riding Along With Wyatt Earp, but I never bought it and it really starts to have problems halfway through.

 

1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers are offered on both Blu-ray releases, but Games looks like an older HD master and despite being shot in the Super 35mm film format by Director of Photography Alan Caso, A.S.C. (later of Six Feet Under), this was not a great-looking film to begin with and the early use of digital visual effects has dated this more badly than expected.  Arrows has much better performance with decent color throughout, some good depth and has a more cinematic grasp of the scope frame than many films I have seen lately.  The anamorphically enhanced DVD version is not as good as the Blu-ray, which does a much better job of showing Director of Photography’s Kim Tae-sung work.  He also did the music score!

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Wyatt is soft and has motion blur, but some bad editing, bad visual effects and bad visual choices do not help either.

 

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on the Blu-rays have their limits, but for different reasons.  Games has what sounds like an older soundmaster or that the sound is a generation down, while Arrows has a laid-back soundmix until the action and music kick in.  The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on its DVD is weaker still, but the DTS-MA on the Blu-ray has some good moments.  That leaves the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Wyatt that is also weak, but also has some location and mixing issues that show its budget limits.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo