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Catch .44
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Anchor Bay Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Ethan Stevenson (26th January 2012). |
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The Film
 Bold bad girls, bigger and badder bad guys, and a bag full of money from a busted coke deal gone wrong, all coming together in a crescendo of crummy crime, culminating in a Mexican standoff in an old interstate diner—one with an old jukebox tucked away in a corner, supplying a catalog of obscure tunes for the soundtrack. Is this homage to Tarantino, or is it just a rip-off? That’s the question on which writer/director Aaron Harvey’s “Catch .44”—populated by a curious cast of interesting variety, including Bruce Willis, Forrest Whitaker and Brad Dourif—hinges. And sorry to say, “.44” is more outright plagiaristic than it is a thoughtfully playful pontification of pop culture references of the Quentin Tarantino school. Harvey’s film has a few things to like about it—namely a pair of oddball performances from Willis and Whitaker—but is otherwise so thoughtlessly trite, and clearly copied from the formulas of Tarantino’s (particularly earlier) scripts that it becomes a terrible chore and is kind of a never-ending bore to sit through. “Catch .44” is a clichéd copycat: a peppering of “True Romance” (1993) and “Reservoir Dogs” (1992), with a side of “Pulp Fiction” (1994) and just a dash of grindhousian style from “Death Proof” (2007). Tes (Malin Akerman), Dawn (Deborah Ann Woll), and Kara (Nikki Reed), three skanky strippers turned stick-up chicks, speed towards a diner in the boonies of the Bayou in their BMW. Along the way, the girls meet up with an awkward deputy (Forrest Whitaker), who, it turns out, isn’t really a deputy at all and is just wearing the uniform of the dead guy in his trunk. The girls get to the diner, planning to rob the two thugs meeting at the eatery and hoping to broker a million-dollar drug deal, but, soon—after Akerman does her best Tim Roth impersonation and utters the fateful words “alright, everybody be cool, this is a robbery” (or something like that)—it all goes to hell. Bullets and bodies flung everywhere from a firefight, in the end, everyone, except Tes, a shotgun-toting kitchen cook (Shea Whigham) and, showing up again in the nick of time, the not so dutiful dummy deputy, lay dead. And all three of them—aimlessly arguing about how and why they’re stuck in their particularly sticky situation—are about to join the not-so-dearly departed when Mel (Bruce Willis), the skuzzy drug-dealing conman who concocted the girl’s entire plan, shows up to make sure the whole miserable mess is but a memory. Harvey presents his plot in a way that could be considered cool, if it hadn’t been done a thousand times before. The story starts at the end and works backward, the narrative freely jumping from beginning to middle, back to the beginning, closer to the end, and settling anywhere in between for long stretches of time, stopping to allow Harvey’s characters time to spew long-winded monologues of hipster-ish dialogue. His characters blabber on, the kind of never-ending nonsense that Tarantino uses to fill the lulls between blood-spattered action scenes. Only, more often than not, Quentin’s quill quietly quells a sense of ever-tightening tension in his scripts, perfectly translated from page and screen. Harvey’s… doesn’t. The story’s climax comes at about the 20 minute mark—is rewound, replayed and ridiculously regurgitated several more times over the next hour—and yes, it’s splattered with blood, but of the utterly fake CG kind. And when Harvey turns the film back, or jumps the story forward, with fetishistic flourishes of stupid style—having the film, suddenly filled with specks and grime, come off the gate and even catch fire—there’s really no added sense of tension to the clichéd climax, no matter how many times Harvey diverts from or returns to the scene. Both Willis, playing a sort of sleazy, liver-spotted Charlie to Akerman’s “angelic” Tes, and Whitaker, hamming it up as the chameleon-ish Ronny, with all sorts of over-affected accents (his deputy has a twangy drawl; an earlier persona has him pretending to be a stuttering, simple-minded fool) for his parade of oddball cover-up characters, are highlights, each performer obviously delighting in the chance to show off their character-acting chops. A brief appearance by Dourif, as a local sheriff in over his head with corpses piling up around him, is also welcomed, although he has even less to do than Willis, whose two (of three total) scenes bookend the beginning and end of the film. But Akerman—the bad actress she is—and the other two girls who viewers are forced to spend most of the runtime with, are annoying. Woll’s character exists to cause problems and so that Akerman can bounce her overwrought dialogue off of someone. Reed wouldn’t be so bad, but she basically just listens to her iPod in the backseat of the car and plays a corpse with a bullet hole in the gut after the shootout. Oh, and her MP3 player also offers Harvey the chance to pull from an even bigger jukebox to add cool musical flavor to his film. But no matter the surprisingly strong supporting performances, “Catch .44” is still just a clichéd Tarantino ripoff and not a good movie in most other respects. Personally, I found the whole experience to be a waste of time—not to mention a waste of some considerable talent(s).
Video
If nothing else, Harvey’s film has one thing that it benefits from in attempting to ape Tarantino’s style: surprisingly solid cinematography. Although never at any point as fantastically framed or lusciously lit as the superior writer/director’s films—especially those shot by Robert Richardson—Harvey and his director of photography Jeff Cutter make effective use of the 2.40:1 frame, positioning actors and objects attractively within the widescreen ratio. The bright lighting and saturated color schemes of the many interiors are also nicely rendered and give the film a more textured quality. Sourced from the 2K digital intermediate, and shot digitally with the RED One MX at 4.5K, the Blu-ray of “Catch .44” looks, all things considered, great. The 1080p 24/fps AVC MPEG-4 high definition transfer has immense detail—especially in close ups of Whitaker’s face as he perspires profusely in the standoff, the droplets and beads of sweat marking his face and accentuating lines and pores like little rivers and ponds on a pockmarked surface of a face-landscape. Akerman’s popping pink lips are also particularly noteworthy in the same scenes. And the robe that Willis wears in the middle of the film, when Tes goes to see him at his palatial mansion—and even Willis’ older-aged make up in those same scenes—provide intricate fabrics and facial details. Contrast is excellent, with the image exporting plenty of depth and clean, well-delineated lines between dark and light. And colors are at times unusually hued—a scene with Tes at the strip club is batched in blues, purples and reds (also look for a cameo by Michael Rosenbaum; he of “Smallville” (2001-2011) fame)—but overall quite nice. Unfortunately, the scenes with the girls in the Beemer on the road, and when they’re approached by Whitaker’s fake cop, have severe black crush and limited detail; a few other shots appear softer than the rest of the film too; and noise is an issue in a few scenes as well. But, while those minor faults add up to a small handful of noticeable issues that make “Catch .44” far from a perfect presentation on Blu-ray, the disc is still very nice looking. And best of all, it doesn’t appear to suffer from any egregious edge enhancement or digital noise reduction, or have any serious encoding flaws.
Audio
To again heap praise on a film otherwise undeserving of much, “Catch .44’s” lossless English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track is quite good. Harvey’s “score”—his cycling of hip, but admittedly superbly chosen soundtrack—adds an eclectic flavor to the film. And although it’s mostly dialog—lots and lots and lots of painfully tedious dialogue—the delivery is clear and without fault. The few bursts of action, like the shootout, make forceful use of the full soundscape. A sturdy low end supports the sporadic gunfire. Effects have decent directionality. The disc also includes optional English and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
The only extra of note is an audio commentary with writer/director Aaron Harvey and editor Richard Byard. As commentaries go, this is a thoroughly unspectacular, although admittedly competent, conversation with the director (talking about casting and working with A-listers on a budget) and his editor (who brings a more technical voice to the track). For a film so caught up in its own Tarantino-ish flourishes that it becomes more annoying rip-off than loving homage, it’s amazing this commentary isn’t nauseating. I can’t say that the track will win over those not charmed by the film; but it’s a decent discussion all the same. The disc also includes the following pre-menu bonus trailers for: - “The Son of No One” (2.35:1 widescreen 1080p, 2 minutes 25 seconds)—this looks like an enormous waste of (once) talented people… and Channing Tatum. - “The Killing Fields” (2.35:1 widescreen 1080p, 2 minutes 13 seconds) on blu-ray and DVD.
Packaging
“Catch .44” arrives on Blu-ray in a simple package from Starz/Anchor Bay Home Entertainment. The single-layered BD-25 is housed in an Elite eco-case and is locked to Region A.
Overall
A pair of strong supporting performances can’t change the fact that Aaron Harvey’s “Catch .44” is, at the end of the day, a Tarantino ripoff. The Blu-ray has good video and audio and includes an audio commentary for those interested. I suggest a rental first. I wasn’t a fan.
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