Out Of The Blue (2006/Genius/IFC DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B- Film: B-
I have
never been too impressed with Karl Urban and his relentless genre work in
usually bad film and TV projects, but as the police officer trying to end a
massacre in Robert Sarkies’ Out Of The
Blue (2006) finally shows he has more to offer than just hype in commercial
and commercially-safe product. Based on
a true incident in New Zealand and based on the book by Bill O’Brien (Aramoana: Twenty-Two Hours Of
Terror, adapted by Sarkies and Graeme Tetley) tells the nightmare story
in a quiet town of how one David Gray (Matthew Sutherland) took a rifle and
embarked on a killing spree.
Less
usual in countries other than the U.S., this whole affair hit everyone by surprise
and with great shock when it happened, so here, we see just how shocked
everyone is as this man kills anyone and everyone in his way. It starts out as he decides to start his
kills in “hidden sniper” fashion, then it becomes a game of cat and mouse as
the townspeople too-slowly learn what is going on and do what they can until
the man is stopped. Like many U.S.
incidents, many of the murders come from the element of surprise, but this film
is also a character study of the place and its people. Sure, we have seen some of this before, but
this is intelligent, mature filmmaking that deserves as large and audience as
possible.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is nicely shot by Director of
Photography Greig Fraser, who shows off how great the country looks, while also
constantly setting up angle shots that build up suspense and add to the tension
of the overall narrative. This includes
some dark humor. Unfortunately, this is
a bit softer than I would have liked and the DVD format itself may be part of
the problem, so we’ll look forward to seeing this on Blu-ray. The Dolby Digital 5.1 is not bad, but subtle,
has many patches of silence and much dialogue, so is limited by default, though
I wonder if a better sound codec would help.
Extras include a making of featurette, stills, Tragedy featurette, Honoring
Aramoana featurette, Recollection
From The Actors piece and decent feature length audio commentary by Sarkies
and O’Brien.
- Nicholas Sheffo
