This Beautiful
City
(2007/Cinema Epoch DVD)
Picture: C+ Sound:
C+ Extras: B Feature: B-
In a city full of vice, drugs and the corrupt, there must
be something that is beautiful. This is
a tale involving five lives, a couple, a cop, a pimp and his girlfriend, in the
midst of running into that hidden treasure.
Caught up in the craziness of the world they do what they need
do to survive, but also search for their reasons they are live for. Unknown to each other their lives become
inner-connected, expressing their repressed sexual desires, angers and fears
they find their release in the city that they live in.
This film has not one or two main characters but five, but
more like five different stories all going at once. A man who has issues with his wife, needing
someone to need him, his wife feels trapped by the 'rules' of life almost kills
herself by falling from the balcony. A
dead beat cop that feels like a washed up 'has been'. A paranoid pimp and his
drugged up girlfriend trying to quit their daily livelihoods. Each one of them is searching for something,
the truth, drugs or sex, security, or just a way out, the one thing that
is beautiful in their lives.
This film sort of reminds me of Pulp
Fiction, of multiple stories and how the characters lives are
connected directly or indirectly, but without all the action. Ironically this film called This Beautiful City (from
Writer/Director Ed Gass-Donnelly) is not really beautiful nor it's people,
but then that's maybe what the director wanted, the contrast be what is
beautiful and what is not. The actors
each portray a fallen or lost character searching for some sort
of either redemption or the one moment of happiness, to discover
what is ideally beautiful in their ugly lives. And in contrast
by the end, they all have very different 'beautiful' things.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image and Dolby
Digital 2.0 Stereo are not great, but passable and this does not have a huge
budget, but plays back as well as can be expected for what it is. Extras include commentary, deleted scenes and
a still gallery.
- Ricky Chiang
