Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot! (1967/Blue Underground Blu-ray)/The FP (2011/Image Blu-ray)/Seeking Justice (2011/Anchor Bay
Blu-ray w/DVD)
Picture:
B-/B-/B- & C Sound: C+/B-/B-
& C+ Extras: C+/C/C Films: B-/C-/C
Here is a
Spaghetti Western you may have missed and two newer action releases that are
stuck in the 1980s…
Giulio
Questi’s Django Kill… If You Live,
Shoot! (1967) is not a sequel to the 1966 Franco Nero hit we reviewed at
this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10195/Django+(1966/Blue+Underground+Bl
It is one
of the few non-comical Leone-inspired Spaghetti Westerns that had other titles
without the Django name, but tries to go into other directions as a Western and
a film. It has characters obsessed with
greed and violence, with gold being an especially motivating lust factor in all
kinds of ways. The protagonist played
well here by star Tomas Milian (The
Yards, Young, Violent, Dangerous)
is effective enough and carries the film well as he barely comes back from
being killed off to get back at those who thought they had killed him off.
Though we
have seen some things featured here before, the approach is different and the
makers take time for suspense and quiet exposition that includes sexuality
(heterosexual and some male homo erotica that is not showy and makes narrative
sense) adding up to a film that distinguishes itself from the Leone films and
other Django films. Ray Lovelock makes
his acting debut here and the mostly unknown cast is pretty good, believable
and effective throughout. Franco
Arccalli edited and co-wrote some of Leone’s films, so that explains another
reason it works. If you like these
films, go out of your way for this one.
Extras
include a Posters & Stills Gallery, Theatrical Trailer and Django,
Tell!,
an interview featurette with Director Questi.
The Trost
Brothers (listed as “Bros”) go back to the 1980s with the amusingly bad The FP (2011), which is a 1980s styled
videogame/revenge film as a competition that brings us to the deadly
underground world of giant arcade dance videogaming takes on a Punk/New Wave
look and takes place in the title locale: Franklin Park. It may seem like it is in another state, but
it is only a little way away from Los
Angeles, but is not discussed much.
Despite
the style, it is supposed to take place in the future, but it seems so much
like the past and like a bad Sylvester Stallone Rocky formula, specifically the
arm wrestling wreck Over The Top. At least Stallone (or his brother Frank) do
not contribute a vocal song to this project.
The unknown cast has limited chemistry and give mixed performances, but
it is consistent and better than the dreadful Paranormal Activity, whose producers picked this one up. Too bad it too does not work.
Extras
include a feature length audio commentary track by the Trosts, a theatrical
Trailer, two Making of featurettes and a 16 page booklet inside the Blu-ray
case including contributions by Rob Zombie and the Mark Neveldine/Mark Taylor
directing duo who recently ruined the Ghost
Rider franchise with a horrible sequel.
Roger
Donaldson’s Seeking Justice (2011) follows
two of his best films, the underrated The
Bank Job (2008) and even more underrated World’s Fastest Indian (2005/both reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on
this site) with Nicolas Cage as a married man being targeted by a mysterious
stranger (Guy Pierce) when his wife (January Jones) is brutally raped, but
why? The unknown man says they’ll kill
the rapist if (in a tired gangster cliché) will do something for him (them) “in
the future” and he eventually goes for it, sort of.
They want
him to kill an alleged pedophile, which he almost does, but accidentally, yet
he is accused of being a murderer and is pursued after. Unfortunately, the script is weak and even
the fine cast cannot save it, especially when it keeps adding twists every time
they cannot think of an original place to taker the story and that is too
often. The result is one of those
thrillers that showed up starting in the 1980s that were increasingly dumbed
down to manipulate the audience and make them feel a false sense of
superiority, sometimes to a cynical extent.
The
result is a project that starts out with promise and gets into trouble early,
never recovers and just gets worse and worse and worse. Too bad, because we deserved better and
Donaldson must have been trying to do something very commercial looking for a
big hit, but this will not even reach the audience of his last two better
films. A Behind The Scenes featurette is
short and the only extra.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on all three Blu-rays have
their issues, with the new productions being HD shoots and looking softer than
they should, even including style choices.
Justice was shot on the Panavision Genesis HD camera and it was never a
great camera and is looking date as compared to the likes of the Arri Alexa by
this time. Django was shot in 2-perferation 35mm Techniscope and was
originally issued in now-very-valuable dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor prints
that this disc sometimes emulates in its color range. However, other footage can be aged and dated,
but grain is not as bad as one might expect.
It is also the best looking of the three overall and narrowly. The anamorphically enhanced DVD of Justice is really soft and hard to
watch.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is on FP and Dolby TrueHD 5.1 on Justice
are the best-sounding films here, but both have inconsistent soundfields and
are not as dynamic as either should be.
I expected more from Justice,
with both having sound sometimes too much towards the front speakers or more
sound than I would have liked in the center channel. The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on the Justice DVD is weaker still, but the
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0 Italian and English lossless mixes on Django are a little aged sounding with
some background noise and both have post-production dialogue typical of Italian
films of the time.
The
Italian rack has more dialogue than the English version, maybe more than usual
and the music by Ivan Vandor is better than one might notice.
- Nicholas Sheffo
