The Echelon Conspiracy (2009/Paramount Blu-ray + DVD)
Picture: B-/C+ Sound: B-/C+ Extras: D Feature: D
Despite
having a cast that includes Ving Rhames,
Martin Sheen and even Ed Burns, Greg Marcks’ The Echelon Conspiracy (2009) is a truly awful would-be thriller
that plays more like a bad sub-cable TV movie than anything involving action
and boy, is it stupid!
Shane
West is a computer expert who starts to get phone calls inviting him to
participate in “something” and without knowing what it is, he decides to start
listening to the messages. Might he be
killed, murdered, raped, tortured? Who
knows? Who cares! He apparently does not.
Instead,
he becomes part of a spy operation and then this gets even worse. No one in their right mind would just follow
these things blindly, especially if they are as clever as his character is
supposed to be, but here he goes and you can see why this is going straight to
home video. And West may be likable, but
dull here. It is with some irony that
the cell phone picture has yellow that makes it look like the unpublished book
“Bad Thrillers For Dummies”. It sure wants to be a dumbed-down Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible, with Rhames in
tow, but that is an insult to those films and they are not even as good as the
early seasons of the original series.
Go way
out of your way to skip this one!
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on the Blu-ray is much softer than a new
production should be with poor detail, noise and phony color that makes it hard
to believe this was shot in the Super 35mm film format. The anamorphically enhanced DVD image is even
weaker and worse. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1
mix on the Blu-ray is also underwhelming and far too much towards the screen,
plus the range seems flat and soundfield dull.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on the DVD is worse. There are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
