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P2
R1 - America - Summit Entertainment Review written by and copyright: James Teitelbaum (6th April 2008). |
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The Film
 Angela (Rachel Nichols) is a hard-working executive who is having a rough day. It is Christmas eve, and she can't seem to get out of the office. Her family are waiting for her to show up for Christmas dinner, she is late, and she is sort of annoyed. When she finally finishes her work and makes it down to the parking garage, her car won't start. Given that it is late on Christmas eve, there are no other cars left in the garage. Wes Bentley plays Tom, the parking garage attendant, and he tries to help her out. Well, that is how it seems at first. One thing leads to another, and Tom ends up being a psychopathic freak who holds Angela prisoner in the garage. Tom is lonely and believes that Angela will spend Christmas with him - and chains her to a table to make sure of it - but Angela, of course, is not so enthusiastic about things. She tries to escape. With the exception of a few supporting players (a few co-workers in the initial fifteen minutes or so and a pair of cops later on), Nichols and Bentley are the only real characters in this film, and there are very few scenes that take place outside of the parking garage. Given this, casting was of key importance in making "P2" work. it is interesting then,that they paired the somewhat well-known Bentley with a complete unknown like Nichols. Acquitting herself admirably, Nichols is trying her very best to impress here, and given the rather mundane material at hand, she isn't entirely bad. In both looks and demeanor she comes off like a bit of a less sophisticated Jodie Foster. The nature of the film dictates that the curvy Nichols is soon out of her office attire and into a slinky dress, which she fills out rather nicely. However, the focus on her cleavage on the DVD cover image makes it a bit tricky to take her as seriously as an actress as one might take Foster. Let's see what she does next. Bentley does his best to be creepy, recalling Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's immortal classic "Psycho" (1960). Bentley's Tom is charming, friendly, and boyish, innocently kidnapping and torturing Angela with little sense of his doing wrong. The poor guy just wants a girlfriend on Christmas, and doesn't seem to have though through what he is going to do after the night is over - he'd either have to killer her, hide the body, hide the car, and destroy the security camera data (and then explain where the data went), or flee the city himself, but this is never really addressed - either the film-makers didn't think that far ahead, or perhaps Tom didn't. "P2" is a competently shot and edited low-budget thriller that is more or less predictable at every turn. If your bag is watching a girl run around a parking garage in an increasingly grimy slip dress for ninety minutes with a freaky guy chasing her, then proceed.
Video
Presented in the film;s original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1 features anamorphic enhancement. The darkness of the garage is captured well with deep and murky blacks. I saw a bit of compression artifacting here and there, but not to the point of major distraction. The print is clean. Running time is 1:31:31, divided into 24 chapters.
Audio
"P2" is presented in English Dolby Digital 5.1, with subtitles in English and Spanish. Audio isn't a huge factor in this film, as dialogue is relatively minimal, and there are only so many sound effects that you're going to get out of a parking garage. Nevertheless, the big ambient reverbs of the concrete space fill the soundscape nicely, and the percussive score by Tomandandy sits right up at the top of the mix.
Extras
Summit Entertainment has included an audio commentary, three featurettes, the film's theatrical trailer and a bonus trailer as extras on this disc. Below is a closer look at these supplements. A scene-specific audio commentary track with director/co-writer Franck Khalfoun, producer/co-writer Alexandre Aja, and producer Gregory Levasseur features the two French Canadian producers speaking with the director. The producers come off well, but Khalfoun seems to be a bit of a tool. They keep things fairly lively and talk with enthusiasm about their small cast and their single big parking garage set. "A New Level of Fear: The Making of P2" runs for 12 minutes 6 seconds and is your basic production featurette, containing interviews with Khalfoun, Aja, Bentley, and Nichols who seem to be using the running time trying to convince people to see this movie rather than saying much about how the film was made. There is relatively little on-set footage. "Tension Nouveau: Presenting Franck Khalfoun" is a fearturette that runs for 3 minutes 2 seconds and contains additional interview footage with the above listed people, but doesn't really focus on the director at all (as the title might imply). "Designing Terror" runs for 5 minutes 19 seconds, this is a featurette about how the parking garage set was built. The bonus features wrap up with the film's original theatrical trailer which runs for 2 minutes 27 seconds and a bonus trailer for "Never Back Down" which runs for 2 minutes 32 seconds.
Overall
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