Easy Money (2010/Weinstein Company/Anchor Bay DVD)/Luv (2012/Indomina/Gaiam Vivendi DVD)/The Other Son (2011/Cohen Media Group Blu-ray)

 

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

 

 

Here are three dramas about manhood that eventually become entangled in criminal activity.

 

 

Daniel Espinosa’s Easy Money (2010) is based on a book by Jens Lapidus and tells the story of a business student JW (Joel Kinnaman of the cable series The Killing and the upcoming RoboCop remake) who dresses like the models hanging on his wall and is rubbing shoulders with big businesspeople in Stockholm, Sweden when he falls for a sexy, upper class gal and gets in the crossfire between major drug-dealing entities about to go to war with each other.

 

Instead of clichés, tired formula and the played out side of Gangster tales we have suffered through too often lately, this is a bold, honest look at the lives of the people here, a character study of them and their world, a film that takes us to places we have not been to before and a remarkable performance by Kinnaman carrying a film as the lead against a strong cast of actors we need to see more.  The film is in several languages, with more than its share of English, but the script has exceptional structure and I was surprised how rich this managed to be throughout its impressive 125 minutes.

 

Picked up by Martin Scorsese and The Weinstein Company for the U.S. market, this and the recent Killing Them Softly (also a Weinstein release we’ll be covering soon) are the best Gangster genre works since The Sopranos folded and I liked this one a little more.  As Kinnaman becomes more and more of a star, this will become more and more of a curio and those who see it are in for a pleasant surprise.  This one is worth going out of your way for!

 

Shockingly, this great film has no extras!

 

 

Sheldon Candis’ Luv (2012) had potential as a man with a criminal past named Vincent (Common) irresponsibly takes his nephew (Michael Rainey, Jr.) out with him at the worst possible time as he dodges old enemies, tries to make financial deals that will help him and set his life on a better course, but having a pre-teen child around is not good and it is not going to be a good day.

 

Playing like a bad mix of Training Day (the experienced and inexperienced driving through the tough streets) and Telling Lies In America (the experienced and inexperienced seeing the dark side of business deals; both reviewed elsewhere on this site), the acting is good and some locales help, but despite potential, this is sloppy, awkward and was very disappointing as I waited for it to get better and it just got worse and kept making more and more mistakes throughout to the point that I just did not buy it.  It will be a curio at best down the line, but what a big miss!

 

Extras include a feature length Director/Writer audio commentary track, Original Theatrical Trailer, Deleted Scenes and two Making Of featurettes.

 

 

Lorraine Levy’s The Other Son (2011) is a decent, sometimes predictable, sometimes amusing and sometimes unbelievable drama about two families who find out in a crisis when their sons had just been born that they may have been handed the opposite children by accident.  That this is between a Jewish and Palestinian family is part of where the comedy and pain is supposed to come from and this is well cast, well acted and well intended, but there are some flaws to go with the obviousness of things.

 

It took two decades for anyone to consider the young men might not look like their parents?  Can the script come up with more than how their lives would be different if this did not happen?  Does it really thoroughly deal with the West Bank issues today that are long overdue to be resolved?  Not always.

 

If anything, it reminded me of the superior TV series Switched At Birth (reviewed elsewhere on this site) which deals very well with the deaf community in groundbreaking ways.  There is nothing groundbreaking here, so this is just more of what we have seen and the ending is so melodramatic and out of nowhere that it shows the makers did not know where to go, but this is still worth a look for the good work here and we will likely be seeing some of these actors again.

Extras include a Blooper Reel, Deleted Scenes and Making Of featurette, plus a thin booklet with chapters, cast and stills is included inside the Blu-ray case.

 

 

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Son is easily the image champion and not just because it is the only Blu-ray here, but because the anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Money and anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Luv are both softer than I would have liked and Luv has more motion blur.  Son is not perfect and has some styling choices that work against it and its performance, but this is the way it is supposed to look.  I wish Money was a Blu-ray since I believe this could look better, but a Luv Blu-ray might bring out more flaws.

 

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Son is towards the front speakers, but it sounds warm and pretty good throughout, yet the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Money is more active and can easily compete, plus a lossless version would probably outdo Son.  The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on Luv is poorly, awkwardly mixed and not always well recorded, making me wonder what went wrong here.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo