The Lucky Ones (2006/Lionsgate DVD)
Picture:
B Sound: B Extras: C
Film: B
After
being thoroughly impressed with Neil Burger’s 2006 debut film The Illusionist (reviewed here),
we were excited to see what his sophomoric effort offers; the result is 2008’s The Lucky Ones starring Tim Robbins,
Rachel McAdams, and Michael Pena. Burger
this time deals with a more realistic story that involves three soldiers
returning back to the U.S. after suffering injuries in the Iraq War. The result turns into a strange road trip
where interesting characters are met and life is examined in a new, neat kind
of way. The men find their homeland in
disarray much like the soldiers returning from Vietnam faced, they journey to
find hope, new meaning, and grapple with relationships both new and old.
The story
is co-written by Burger and Dirk Wittenborn and is a mature work that is
handled carefully by Burger in the director’s chair. It’s only a shame the film didn’t receive
more recognition in 2008, but instead flew complete under the radar with a more
low budget quality, the end result though is a truly compelling story that
dares to ask new questions and interface people together in interesting and
complicated ways that we rarely see in film anymore.
Lionsgate
has issued the film to DVD in a pleasing transfer framed at 1.78 X 1 with a
solid color palette that keeps a very natural look that the film achieves with
Declan Quinn’s cinematography. Likewise
the Dolby Digital 5.1 is sufficient; although we’d like to see more DTS mixes,
especially with the Blu-ray taking off like it is, there needs to be more
competition from DVD. Overall picture
and sound are on par for where DVD is in terms of overall fidelity and detail,
but we would certainly welcome this film to Blu-ray as it’s one of 2008’s
better films.
Extras
include a featurette on the making of the film and this is disappointing, as
we’d like to have had a commentary from Burger since he could offer some more
insight into the process. We know that
with two solid films under his belt that Burger will be around to stay and we
are excited to see his future projects, we hope his streak of competent films
continue.
- Nate Goss
