Inescapable (2012/IFC/MPI Blu-ray)/6 Souls
(2010/aka Shelter/Weinstein/Anchor
Bay Blu-ray)
Picture: B- Sound: B/B- Extras: C/D Main Programs: C
Now for
two thrillers that try to go for a more serious crowd and backfire.
A man is
overseas in Europe and The Middle East when
his daughter disappears, so he must go and find her no matter what and has a
past history he is trying to leave behind to have a normal life. That may sound like the plot of the Taken films, but it is also oddly the
high concept behind Ruba Nadda’s Inescapable
(2012) which is almost the same film with much more talking, hardly any action,
some good acting (including Marisa Tomei stealing every scene she is in as his
wife) and nothing else we have not seen before.
If Miss Nadda
is trying to do a drama where everything else is incidental, than that is why
the film, fails on so many levels. If
the idea was to have Alexander Siddig as the lead, making him a more ethnic
version of Liam Neeson, that backfires too and at 93 minutes, it goes nowhere
fast and was boring, if not as preposterous as Taken 2. Joshua Jackson also
shows up, but the film is flat and almost everyone seems as bored as I was
while watching. Tomei is frankly, along
with some occasionally interesting outdoor shots, is the only reason I did not
go to sleep.
Extras
include a Q&A featurette, feature length audio commentary track with
Director Nadda and Director of Photography Luc Montpellier, Behind The Scenes,
Original Theatrical Trailer and Deleted Scenes.
The
awkward directing team of Marlind & Stein saw their film 6 Souls issued in 2010, but that was
two years after filming it moistly quietly in Pittsburgh and (like so many
projects filmed and taped in Pittsburgh on the cheap, though this cost $22
Million) was finished, barely released and has taken over 5 years to make it
home video. I can sadly see why. Julianne Moore plays the psychiatrist
daughter of her psychiatrist father (Jeffrey DeMunn) who is asked to take a
second look at one of his patients (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) who seems to have the
very serious (and very seriously underdiscussed) Multiple Personality Syndrome
and see what she thinks.
After an
interview and some medical/scientific research, something seems a miss and she
starts to think something else might be going on. As she investigates, the personalities all
turn out to be dead people and the medical diagnosis goes out the window.
The film
nearly trivializes the condition initially discussed, but soon branches off
into a flat, lame, sad, dull, problematic, predictable, unintentionally silly
(like so many Moore thrillers since the underrated Hannibal) film that simply does not work, The acting is decent, Pittsburgh is at least
shot well when it is used explicitly and this had potential, but the directors
botch it along with the producers of the highly overrated U.S. remake of The Ring, so that even that could not
sell it to enough fanboys should give you an idea of how much this fails. At least the actors tried and the city was
not made to look bad as often happens in most productions there.
There are
no extras.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on both Blu-ray releases look
good, but are both styled down to be “moody thrillers’ in ways that are corny,
cliché and do not help either of them in the long run. Inescapable
is a flat HD shoot with few good shots, while Souls was actually shot in the Super 35mm film format (though the
stock they used is not know, as if it were some secret, but it is either Fuji
or oddly darkened Kodak) with Arriflex cameras and is the slightly better of
the two, thanks in part to Director of Photography Linus Sandgren (Promised Land) whose work helps this
from becoming a total dud.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on both Blu-rays are well-recorded
mixes, but Inescapable has the
better playback with the default highlight of a consistent soundfield that is
warm, decent and at least effectively presented, while Souls is often dialogue-based, has its share of silence and can be
towards the front speakers by design apparently. I just do not think the mixers always made
the best choices here.
- Nicholas
Sheffo