Raising Flagg (2007/Cinema Libre DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C-     Feature: C

 

 

Alan Arkin is making a latter-day comeback thanks to a series of critical and commercial successes, leading to his recent casting as The Chief in the upcoming Get Smart revival.  It is hard to say how that will go, but as the ornery neighbor sick of his animals being dirtied in Raising Flagg, we get a good idea by co-writer/director Neal Miller, who cannot make this work despite some ambition and a good cast.

 

Flagg Purdy (Arkin) has friends, kids, family and a good small town life, even playing chess with an old friend (Austin Pendleton, highly underused here) when he decides to go to court against a neighbor (Clifton James) when he could have just approached him personally to fix things.  That is also the problem with the script, going into directions that never really work.  All in all, we’ve seen worse, but it is a shame that this did not add up to more.  The potential was there, but you can forget it otherwise.

 

The letterboxed 1.78 X 1 image is soft and weak, with image blur all over the place and weak color to match.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is mixed and adequate to hear the dialogue.  Extras include trailers and a director’s commentary that was fair.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo