Seven Psychopaths (2012/CBS/Sony Blu-ray)/The Thieves (2012/Well Go USA Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B-/B     Sound: B-/B     Extras: C     Films: C/C+

 

 

Now for two new releases intent on duplicating two popular action cycles of feature filmmaking and only far.  Still, at least they were ambitious.

 

 

Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths (2012) is a bizarre co-production between the prestigious British Film Institute and in-silly-mode theatrical film arm of the CBS television network.  Another attempt at melding a ripping off Quentin Tarantino with the two (and counting?) Boondock Saints films, Colin Farrell is a guy writing a screenplay about killers while real killers are on the loose (especially a masked one who leaves a playing card with each person shot dead) and could get more than authentic advice from several of the people he already knows and is about to meet.

 

The cast is even a good one with Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Tom Waits, Abbie Cornish, Olga Kurylenko (Quantum Of Solace) and Harry Dean Stanton in what is a dream group, but the screenplay just cannot support all that talent and though it never becomes a smug affair, it is a predictable one and one that is too lite and coy to work.  That it plays like a slightly violent TV movie with bigger names I will blame CBS about 100% for and becomes one of the great missed opportunities and disappointments of all of 2012.  See it only if you really like the actors or this kind of film, because you will be bored otherwise.

 

 

Dong-Hoon Choi’s The Thieves (2012) is a big budget Korean attempt to do a high class, price, fun, click, comic heist film and the money is there as is the fun cast with chemistry and total believability.  It wants to be the remake Ocean’s films, remake of The Italian Job, all the Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible films, any spy film they can fit in and anything else you can name with some great locales all over Asia as the anti-heroes try to steal the equivalent of $20 Million.  It is unfortunately everything we have seen before, but to see it with these locales shot so well and wit the energy and a few surprises makes it worth a look if you like this kind of film.

 

Even if you don’t like subtitles, you don’t need to read many of them to get what is going on and to be blunt, the cast and crew have made a genre film that can more than compete with its Hollywood and British counterparts, formulaic as it might be.  The result was a work that I did get a kick out of, even when I knew what was coming.  If you like this kind of action with a change of pace, you should go out of your way to see The Thieves.

 

 

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on both releases are also slickly stylized and have some nice visual moments, with Psychopaths shot in the 3-perf Super 35mm film format and Thieves show on a 5K Red Epic HD camera.  In this case, Psychopaths has been stylized more often than it needed to be and suffers by comparison to Thieves which has more money in it, more locales to show off and a more glossy approach, especially since the films it is trying to emulate are more like that than the pulpy grit Psychopaths wants to offer.

 

Both also offer DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes, but Psychopaths has a mix that is more dialogue-based and more towards the front speakers, while Thieves is more active and enveloping throughout, if not clever or exceedingly dynamic.

 

Extras on both include featurettes Psychopaths offering seven plus Ultraviolet Copy and Thieves offering two, but it also has an Original Theatrical Trailer.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo