Death In Love (2008/Screen Media Blu-ray + DVD)
Picture:
C+/C Sound: B- Extras:
D Film: D
Boaz
Yakin is one of the oddest survivors in Hollywood,
writing some of the poorest scripts (the Dolph Lundgren Punisher, Charlie Sheen Rookie,
a Dirty Dancing Sequel), directing
fluff like Remember The Titans and
co-producing those highly overrated Hostel
flicks. Nothing like mediocrity begin
constantly rewarded. With Death In Love, he tries to do a serious
“legitimate” film and lands up with a total mess on his hands that shows once
again how weak his narrative skills are.
Our story
begins with a young Nazi Concentration Camp prisoner throwing herself to a
doctor who goes for having sex with her and it lands up saving her life. Then we get a wacky montage of sex, sex with
older people, odd lines about living bodies like death, shots of bodies being
cut open, including shots that graphically suggest Nazi experimentation and
mutilation of prisoners.
That is
just the beginning of what a blur this whole mess becomes. All the people have generic character names,
Jacqueline Bisset plays the woman as an adult with two very different sons; the
storyline suggesting what she did is from a legacy of Nazism that along with
the montage manages to trivialize The Holocaust. I never bought anything here for a minute and
the use of sexual footage is highly desperate as it was in Hostel.
Lukas
Haas plays the damaged younger son, while Josh Lucas is the older son, both
good actors (though Lucas never seems to be able to find good roles that work
for him despite years of effort) while Adam Brody, Emma Bell, Vanessa Kai, Jean
Brassard and Morena Baccarin are among a good supporting cast. Acting and casting is good, all wasted by Yakin’s
lack of ability to put on screen what he is trying to say. He does say this came from his
depression. Guess that is not resolved
yet.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image is shockingly weak and noisy throughout
for what is supposed to be a 35mm shoot.
Color has been gutted a bit for the newer scenes and more so for the
Holocaust era. The anamorphically
enhanced DVD is even weaker with poor Video Black and that weakens the already
weak picture throughout. The sound in
both formats is Dolby TrueHD 5.1 for the Blu-ray and Dolby Digital 5.1 for the
DVD, but they both sound on par with each other, as the rich TrueHD shows sonic
limits the DVD’s older Dolby codec does not.
Extras in both formats include three featurettes, Cast Interviews and a
feature length Cast/Crew Audio Commentary that tries to explain al of this and
shows why it does not work.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
