Fragments
(2008/aka Winged Creatures/Sony DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: C- Film: C-
In a
strange quest to produce another Crash
and not understanding what a fluke it and its success was (related in part to
Robert Altman’s career), a cycle of imitators keep on coming and most have been
really poor. Rowan Woods’ Fragments was originally entitled Winged Creatures and after a failed
theatrical release, the Roy Freirich-penned mess comes to DVD from Sony under a
new title in order to somehow salvage it.
This
time, the would-be multi-layered story has yet more violence followed by
contemplation (we are supposed to emote “oooooh, how can we stop that from
happening again?” or “where have we gone wrong?” or, well, you get the idea…)
followed by another outburst of some kind, followed by more supposed moments of
deep thought, etc. Here, the actors are
uneven (Jennifer Hudson, Guy Pierce, Kate Beckinsale, Forest Whittaker, Embeth
Davidtz, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeannie Tripplehorn do well, while Dakota Fanning
keeps talking like a radical Christian extremist in a way that sounds more like
a series of speeches than a performance, but whatever it takes to overact and
chew up the scenery) to the point that Right Wingers would consider it “liberal
propaganda” and even atheists can see it is a joke.
This runs
on for a very long 96 minutes and Whittaker gets another restaurant scene as he
did in the very similar Powder Blue
(reviewed elsewhere on this site) the same year, so if you see him playing a
clinically depressed character in a diner, you are watching a bad drama with a
problematic or bad attempt at multi-layered writing and storytelling!) showing
how tired this formula approach is, no matter what actors you get. And how come when everyone’s life is “changed
forever” it is boring and forgettable?
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is on the weak side, with bad detail,
depth, color and Video Black issues, but the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is not bad
with a decent use of surrounds and a good recording considering this is a
dialogue-based production. Director’s
commentary is the only extra and in this case, that’s more than enough.
- Nicholas Sheffo
