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Texas Killing Fields
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Anchor Bay Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Ethan Stevenson (11th March 2012). |
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The Film
 In many ways “Texas Killing Fields” feels like an over-long pilot episode of a middling primetime crime drama rather than an actual feature-length thriller. And more notable faces—including Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain—and a bloodier, violently "R" rated edge aside, the film really could slip right into one of the many vacant spaces on the broadcast television line up. Replace rising-star Worthington with an aging actor whose movie career trajectory is inversely on the downward slope (oh poor Jason Isaacs), trim the runtime a bit, add in a few act breaks for commercials, tone down the violence just a tad—or at least put a colorful “C.S.I.-y” tint over it—and, boom, instant procedural that’s good for at least a few predictable, 22-episode, seasons on CBS or NBC. “Texas Killing Fields” is the story of two cops—one a local named Mike Souder (Sam Worthington) and the other a recent import from New York City called Brian Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan)—as they work together to uncover the truth behind a series of unsolved murders in backwoods Texas. The creepy serial killer who commits the crimes dumps his victims’ bodies in a place called the Killing Fields, a slewy swamp filled with old oil derricks and twisted trees. The fields are right on the line between two counties and technically, the Killing Field cases fall under the jurisdiction of the League City police department, but Souder and Heigh, who are from the next town over, become involved when Souder’s ex-wife, Pam (Jessica Chastain), the LCPD detective in charge of the case, asks for their help. Souder’s rocky relationship with his ex-wife serves as a much too obvious mirror to the equally troublesome rapport he has with his new partner. See, Heigh is a deeply religious man, who gets way too emotionally invested in his most difficult cases; Souder, on the other hand, is a pseudo-atheist and makes it clear he doesn’t want to hear any of Brian’s proselytizing or that he prays for Souder every night. Mike, unlike his partner, has an extremely jaded worldview (he’s apathetic to the plight of but a few), exuding a coldness that makes him a hard man to be around. But Mike and Brian at least feel bad for one habitual offender, sad local girl named Little Anne (Chloë Grace Moretz) with a shitty mom (Sheryl Lee from “Twin Peaks” (1990-1991), all uglied up to look like a truck stop prostitute), and neither cop wants to see Little Anne fall down the crack whore whole like her mother. Brian even takes Anne in from time to time for a little “wholesome family dinner” with his wife and son. As Mike and Brian dig deeper into the Killing Fields case, the killer begins to play games, teasing the detectives by leaving clues at crime scenes intended to misdirect and toy with their heads. Eventually, Little Anne goes missing and it’s clear the killer is behind the kidnapping. As each man holds out hope that Anne is still alive, the film becomes a race against the clock to save her. Worthington gives one of his typically inconsistent and ultimately generic performances, and while his accent is less obvious here—it’s disguised behind a southern drawl, but occasionally his Aussie-ness still slips through—this is hardly his best work. I blame, mostly, the one-note, “gurr, I have worse anger issues than Elliot Stabler” nature of his character. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is fine, but his character is a bit too much of a cop-drama cliché in the opposite fashion of Worthington’s Mike Souder—Brian is a pious, quiet type, who takes his work way too personally. The female roles are, not too surprisingly, underwritten. Hollywood-it-girl Jessica Chastain does her best, trying to make Pam something more than the archetypal genre necessity that the character is, but she’s quickly relegated to the sidelines by the nature of the plot before long. Sheryl Lee makes an impression, but again has too little screen-time. And the late second act twist necessitates that Ms. Moretz disappear, so… oh well? The three actors positioned as the possible killer—Jason Clarke as a filthy, racist thug named Rule, Stephen Graham as the spectacled Rhino and James Hébert as little Anne’s simple-minded brother Eugene—are all clichéd criminals, without depth or sufficient dramatic significance to the overall plot. The film is at times painfully mediocre—like TV Movie of the Week bland—which is a shame. As noted in the commentary on this disc, and the trivia section on IMDB, “Texas Killing Fields” was at one point, going to be directed by Danny Boyle. But Boyle backed out, claiming the script by retired DEA Agent Don Ferrarone—based in part on real events from the 1970's—was too dark for him, and could never be made in Hollywood. Considering the sort of stuff Boyle’s attached his name to over the years, Ferrarone’s earlier drafts must have been particularly nasty. But very little of that presumed nastiness is present in the product finally released in the end; I assume massive rewrites happened on the way to production. An overly sappy, happy ending seems particularly pointlessly tacked on and made me wonder what the point of the last hour-and-a-half all was. (Just guessing, but I bet the film ended on a much more depressing note, like the dark and unfulfilling climax, where half the characters are riddled with bullets and presumed dead. That might have been an equally unfulfilling end, but at least one with an appropriate, “sometimes the world just sucks” message that fits the tone of the rest of the film.) Elevating “Texas Killing Fields” just a bit above the dullness of derivative TV detective-ness is Ami Canaan Mann’s sturdy direction. The daughter of monstrous filmmaking force Michael Mann (who produced the picture), she obviously learned a few tricks from dear old dad. The well-staged shoot-out and car chase towards the end of the picture—which features Worthington blasting off a few of the loudest gunshots to erupt from a shotgun on film since, well, one of the elder Mann’s many films—is particularly well executed and Mann-esque. Ms. Mann has also inherited her father’s ear for music; an eclectic mix of blues and rock fills the soundtrack and fuels the action. And yet, perhaps Canaan Mann is part of the reason why “Texas Killing Fields” feels like an episode of a primetime procedural. She cut her teeth writing an episode of “NYPD Blue” (1993-2005), and most other writing or directing credits fall into the TV and crime-drama spheres. (See her take on girl-detective “Nancy Drew” (2002)—a telefilm that she wrote for ABC—and the episode of the short-lived “Robbery Homicide Division” (2002-2003) she helmed.) And “Texas Killing Fields” just feels like an uninspired extension of those résumé dotters. It’s another ho-hum TV episode built around cops, only, this one played in theaters.
Video
Michael Mann’s influence extends to the visuals too. Shot digitally on high def video—with the Panavision Genesis—“Texas Killing Fields” looks a lot like the elder Mann’s more recent HD-sourced films. Presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, the 1080p 24/fps AVC MPEG-4 encoded Blu-ray transfer does what it can with DP Stuart Dryburgh and Ami Canaan Mann’s stylistic choices and the inherent limitations of digital video. A few anomies—like a weird artifact during a cross-fade in the opening scene, a particularly distracting case of shimmer in a characters shirt at about 44 minutes, and a particularly ugly swarm of noisy artifacts between minutes 53 and 54 as Little Anne walks down a dirt road—stand out as odd exceptions to an otherwise solid encode. But the bigger faults reside in the original photography. Terribly tweaked via a 2K digital intermediate, the image has been sucked of all lifelike color even in day scenes, which have a yellow filter that flattens contrast. Appropriate for the content though it may be, the film is dingy, dark, drab and the transfer’s deep but clipped blacks swallow detail in shadows. The numerous night scenes are annoyingly noisy too (why is it that so many films shot on digital, a medium that handles darkness far worse than 35mm, take place in low light?). And many wide shots have the slight haloing effect around edges so frequently seen in digitally shot productions. Admittedly, the strengths of digital appear too: close ups are ridiculously sharp, revealing every line and pore in faces, and many of the day scenes have immense detail, slight ringing aside. “Texas Killing Fields” isn’t the best looking disc I seen lately—pretty far from it—but it is, inherent problems and all, a solid Blu-ray. At least from a visual standpoint…
Audio
Once again, daughter like father. The dialogue in Ami Canaan Mann’s film is as indiscernible as any line from “Public Enemies” (2009) or “Miami Vice” (2006), while the gunshots and other effects in the soundtrack are as bombastic as one could hope. But impressive tech specs aside, and as thrillingly loud and “realistic” as the action may be, “Texas Killing Fields’” English Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mix has problems. Major ones, at times. The film is often deafeningly silent—begging the question why it needed the two additional surround channels; the rears, let alone the extra 6th and 7th side-rear channels, are rarely used at all. That’s probably by design, as the film has subtle atmosphere—rustling grasses and chirping cicadas, where appropriate. And at least one torrential rainstorm fills the speakers to a satisfying effect. Bass is powerful, and the score and music have nice clarity and respectable fidelity. I assume the dialogue is faithful to the source too—but that source was just awful. The track big ol’ bag of mumbled exchanges, garbled voices and poorly recorded line readings. In a few scenes it sounds as though the dialogue is “live” audio that was recorded with the mic from a cameraphone. Unbelievably, the track even has a few moments of hiss, a strange case of crackle and, at least on my system—which I replicated on both of my set ups—a drop out. Why weren’t any of these truly atrocious moments replaced in post via ADR? It’s a shame, because the action effects are quite impressive and the music sounds excellent. But, comparatively, it’s like the dialog is from another movie. And that makes for a terrible listening experience. The disc also includes a Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 mono dub and English and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
Like many Starz/Anchor Bay releases, “Texas Killing Fields” is pretty close to barebones in terms of extras, offering only an audio commentary—accessed via the audio setup menu—and the films theatrical trailer. A few pre-menu bonus trailers have also been included. For the record, the disc is authored with optional bookmarks. The audio commentary with director Ami Canaan Mann and writer Don Ferrarone is a dry, technical track. Ferrarone talks about the script and the real-life influence, the characters, and the projects long and troubled production history; Mann talks about how certain sequences were shot, her favorite scenes, casting the picture, how she came to be involved, and several other topics worthy of discussion. The two commentators have a steady back-and-forth, with few moments of silence, but also little life to the conversation. There’s worthwhile information to be learned from this track, but I expect few will care. The disc also includes the theatrical trailer (2.40:1 widescreen 1080p, 2 minutes 13 seconds) for “Texas Killing Fields”. And finally the bonus trailers, which auto-play before the main menu screen, are: - “Martha Marcy May Marlene” (2.40:1 widescreen 1080p, 2 minutes 35 seconds) on Blu-ray and DVD. - “The Divide” (2.35:1 widescreen 1080p, 1 minute 54 seconds) coming soon to Blu-ray and DVD. - “Son of No One” (2.40:1 widescreen 1080p, 2 minutes 29 seconds) coming soon to Blu-ray and DVD. - “Corman’s World: The Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel” (1.78:1 widescreen 1080p, 2 minutes 6 seconds) on Blu-ray and DVD—this documentary looks awesome! - “Battle Royale” (1.78:1 widescreen 1080i, 1 minute 44 seconds) coming soon to Blu-ray and DVD—and lets hope the long-awaited R1 debut of this looks considerably better than the upscaled, interlaced, dirt-ridden and aliased-to-hell trailer when it finally hits our shores soon. I have little doubt it’ll look better, but the fan outrage will be immense if not.
Packaging
“Texas Killing Fields” comes to Blu-ray from Starz/Anchor Bay Home Entertainment, pressed onto a Region A-locked single layered BD-25. The disc comes packaged in an eco-case.
Overall
It’s not that “Texas Killings Fields” is a bad movie. It really, in any aspect, isn’t actually awful. But there’s nothing of laudable note either. The best performances come from characters barely present, the detective duo at the center of the story aren’t particularly likable, the plot is predicable and fit for a primetime procedural. The Blu-ray has solid video, problematic audio and a technical-yet-anecdotal commentary. Worth a rental—especially if you like any of the cast—but probably not much else because there’s basically zero replay value.
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