A new movie has been released today from Image Entertainment. The movie is True Green, and Irish Crime Drama. Is the movie itself worth watching? And is the DVD itself worth purchasing? Find out more below.
THE MOVIE:
Directed by John Hoffman this story finds James Powers (Donal Gallery) as a young 16 year old stuck in Ireland against his choice. His mother has passed away and his father, wanting nothing to do with him or his little brother has sent them to live in Ireland with his aunt. He desperately wants to come back to America and is determined to find a way to do so.
He finds himself employed by some local bookies who run the races in town. There’s Bill the Bookie (Alessandro Nivola) and his right hand man Bill the Breaker (Timothy Hutton) who is responsible for the enforcement of payments. James is responsible for collecting the funds. After learning the ropes, James finds himself starting his own business selling illegal porn magazines on the black market.
With money, power of his own, and the respect of people in his town, he has to determine whether it’s better for him to stay in Ireland, or go to America as he’s always wanted.
I didn’t really know what to expect from this movie. It’s one that escaped my radar. It has some great actors in it including Timothy Hutton and Colm Meaney (who plays Tom, James’ friend). It’s just overall I thought the story was rather dull.
I’ll start by saying a couple of the things I liked. James’ little brother has a lisp. In order not to let people know that he has it, he’s developed an amazing ability to find any combination of words that allow him to say what he wants and none of the words contain the letter “S”. I thought this was brilliant. I won’t give away some of the combinations, but my favorite was his replacement for the word “success”.
James is your typical teenage boy and is completely obsessed with sex. I found it quite funny that for hours on end he goes into the bathroom, or pretty much anywhere he can find to masturbate. When he finds himself in London and stumbles upon magazines of such illicit nature that he’s never seen before, it’s like he’s in heaven and the street vendor who sells them has become his best friend.
The story itself however is dull and boring. It’s completely predictable and for such a short movie is way too long. There just needed to be more here and I felt I wasn’t getting it. Hutton’s character is your typical gangster and everything just fell flat for me.
Since I had no expectations I wasn’t disappointed, just bored with the film.
Final Grade for the film: C
THE VIDEO:
It’s been a while since I’ve watched a DVD in 480P, but I had no issues with the video of this film. The image was clear and I didn’t notice a lot of edge enhancement. I watched it on my Playstation 3 and up converted the video to 1080P and was more than content with the images on screen. All in all I felt that this was a solid transfer and was impressed for a DVD release.
Final Grade for the Video: B
THE AUDIO:
This is not your action type movie where your rear channel speakers are going to get a work out. Presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 this movie is very front heavy. My subwoofer was on, but not once did I sense any real amount of bass coming from it. Dialogue was a little muted and muffled for me. The ambient sounds were good, but the dialogue should be nice and crisp these days. There are certainly better examples of a clean Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack out there so I cannot rate this one that high.
Final Grade for Audio: C –
THE EXTRAS:
The only extra found on this disc is the trailer for the movie. This is disappointing considering when DVD first came out into existence, the idea was to allow the filmmaker the opportunity to showcase their film and allow the watcher to become more immersed in their vision. This is a barebones release for sure.
Final Grade for Extras: F
FINAL THOUGHTS:
A weak movie and weak audio and extras make this movie one that I wouldn’t be recommending to friends anytime soon. The film itself isn’t horrible and if you’re looking to see a very Irish movie than you could check this out. But the DVD itself is a big disappointment. Nowadays studios should put out something of more quality, regardless of whether the film is a mega million blockbuster hit, or indie.
Final DVD Grade: D +
TRR DVD Revue by Bill Ayres
remind me never to take a test from you. you grade hard!