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Johnny Handsome
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Lionsgate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Ethan Stevenson (25th September 2010). |
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The Film
 The first thing I notice as I open the package sitting on my front stoop (which is stuffed full of wonderful review discs), that lay waiting for me just seconds ago, is that the film sitting on top of the pile is “Johnny Handsome” and I wonder to myself, “of all the films that Lionsgate could release on Blu-ray, why this one?” It’s a perplexing choice to get the high-def treatment to say the least Then I see it: a red sticker affixed to the plastic wrap proclaiming something along the lines of “featuring Mickey Rourke, star of "The Expendables" (2010) – now in theaters!” It hits me like a brick; ah, the lovely cross promotion. But what’s this… no redeemable Hollywood Movie Money (or something equivalent) for Stallone’s mega-macho mash-up on the inside flap? That’s bullshit! In actuality the reason for the arrival of “Johnny Handsome” on Blu-ray makes perfect sense – well, almost perfect sense (I do think that the free ticket, or at least discounted ticket, offer should have been included in some form to entice more buyers). Mickey Rourke, one of many stars in the “The Expendables” (2010), only has a few lead roles in films that Lionsgate, the company distributing the independently financed Stallone picture, holds the home video rights to, so they had a pretty small pool to choose from if they wanted to cross-promote a catalogue Blu-ray. That’s reason one for this seemingly random Blu-ray debut. Then, there’s also the fact that the film’s director, Walter Hill, has his fans (I am, at least partly, one of them; in my opinion, he’s made two great films in his career, and a few others that are at the very least, supremely underrated) that will collect a majority of his catalogue given the chance. Right there is reason two. And finally, the third reason for this seemingly random Blu-ray disc, is that, despite being released twice on DVD in the US (well, the same disc was issued and then later reissued with a new cover, from a new owner), “Johnny Handsome” has never had a proper widescreen transfer, or a special edition with extras – at least not until this Blu-ray that is. Rourke plays the titular John “Johnny Handsome” Sedley, an unfortunate man with a terrible face and an even worse speech impediment, all of which he’s blessed with thanks to, the doctors tell him, his crack-whore of a mother and all the drug and alcohol binges she indulged in while little Johnny was still developing in her womb. Sedley’s disfigurement has made him a hideous outcast, a loaner, and left him with little choice but to pursue life as a lowly criminal. In and out of prison and courtrooms throughout his life, the ol’ “pretty boy” deplores society and is quite content wreaking havoc. He has never, ever, gotten along with any normal person, accept one: a petty crook, turned bar owner named Mikey Chalmette (Scott Wilson) whom Johnny always looked to as a sort of father figure. As the film opens, Chalmette asks Johnny to help him with one last score – a heist of collectable coins from a local store – so that he can pay off his crushing debt and maybe get his loan-shark/business partner off of his back. It all goes wrong of course, when the crew that Chalmette put together – which includes his dirty co-owner Rafe (Lance Henriksen) – double-crosses both he and Johnny, taking all of the money and leaving both of them for dead. Mikey dies. Johnny doesn’t. After some time in prison and then, after a particularly savage stabbing, a state-run hospital, where a kind and somewhat naive surgeon named Dr. Fisher (played to great effect by a young Forest Whitaker) successfully petitions to give John a new face and a new identity as part of a radical and experimental program designed to limit criminal recidivism, the once-monstrous “handsome” is reintroduced into society as John Mitchell. At first everything seems peachy. The State parole board arranges for John to get a job as a steelworker at the shipyards, where he meets Donna (Elizabeth McGovern), a kind-hearted soul who he instantly connects with, and he remains fairly content with his new life. But something isn’t right, and he soon realizes that Mikey’s death has gone unavenged and his murderers have gone unpunished. Try as he might, John just can’t let that go, so Handsome hatches a plan to lure the double-crossing members of his old crew, with the help of his new face and new name, to their own doom. “Johnny Handsome” is a pretty standard, by the numbers, revenge flick. It’s by no means a poor film; just that, truth be told, it’s almost laughably cliché in some parts, and it offers little if any real surprises via the plot. You’ve seen most of the various twist and turns before, and there are few truly unique things about this picture that make it standout from the rest of the pack. Even the “new face and identity” angle isn’t all too special; not really anyway. The film doesn’t warrant any sort of praise, save for it’s amazing cast, which includes the aforementioned Rourke, Henriksen and Whitaker, but also Ellen Barkin, and even Morgan Freeman as Lt. A.Z. Drones – a tired, old New Orleans police detective from Johnny’s past (who has an almost uncanny ability to show up at exactly the right, or, depending on your interpretation, wrong, moment). All of them play their parts exceptionally well, but Rourke is, unbelievably, the film’s best actor, which is no small feat considering his company and the performances that they give (which are, as I said, very good). If anyone ever had doubts of young, pre-bludgeoned Mickey Rourke’s acting ability you’ll only need to see about three minutes of “Johnny Handsome” – the reveal of his new face, in which Johnny tearfully looks into the mirror and explores his new features with his hands – to see that, yes, in his earliest days Mickey was incredibly gifted.
Video
“Johnny Handsome” arrives on Blu-ray with a 1.85:1 widescreen 1080p AVC MPEG-4 encoded high definition transfer and I wish I had better news. The image within is, quite disappointingly, ugly, inconsistent and, at times, little (if any) better looking than mediocre standard definition. Sure, this new high-def release blows the film’s previous standard definition DVD away but that’s not too hard considering the Artisan (and later Lionsgate) DVD was absolutely atrocious – one of the worst on the format in my opinion – not to mention over a decade old. And it was pan-and-scanned to boot! For the sheer fact that Lionsgate’s new Blu-ray finally returns the film to it’s proper, wider, framing it’s a godsend… but that doesn’t mean that the actual picture quality is all that good. What’s exactly wrong with the picture? In a word, “Handsome” looks processed. I’d even go as far to use the word butchered; the image been so manipulated that a good majority of the time, I wasn’t even sure I was watching HD anymore. The first thing you’ll notice with the image is an unnatural edginess on hard outlines; the amount of edge enhancement in most scenes is moderate to light, but it’s noticeable all the same and it looks odd. It’s almost like a sharpen filter has been applied to the whole frame because even the tiny black bars on the top and bottom of my screen were edgy and pronounced. I assume then that the sharpen filter – if that’s what it is – came into play because the picture was very obviously beaten to death with the DNR stick. The noise reduction is at times very nasty, evidenced by drab, smeary textures, a considerable lack of fine detail, various plasticy faces and a clumpy, unnatural grain structure. The presence of digital noise reduction and edge enhancement is bothersome to be certain, but the disc general lack of consistency is the biggest problem. Almost segmented into three categories (awful, a bit less awful, and sort of acceptable being the three choices) “Johnny Handsome” and it’s high-def encode improve as time runs on – in small increments. The first act, running until about the 30-minute mark, looks particularly disgusting. It contains the edgiest and most smeary-heavy moments of the film, and has an absurdly flat texture that makes the picture look like an upconverted DVD more than half the time. Grain is clumpy, digital looking and could be better classified as noisy artifacts. There’s basically no high frequency detail. It just doesn’t look even remotely acceptable – save for the fact that it does look better than the SD rendering due to the correct framing composition. The second act is a little less offensive, visually speaking, and by the end of the first hour “Handsome” begins to shed some of its unattractiveness. Ringing and hard edges soften, detail looks more natural, and colors and contrast pop a bit more. Of course the film still largely looks like a total mess, but it’s less of a mess and more high-def-like in appearance for a majority of these second act scenes. The last half hour, cloaked in shadows and set almost exclusively at night, looks best. Blacks are inky and deep, detail can run from soft (but still defined) to actually quite good – sharp without being artificially so – and faces actually have a texture to them that I wouldn’t describe as plastic. Other comments: colors fluctuate, although that seems to be stylistically intentional; at least I assume, because Hill shot many of the flashbacks in black and white and uses quire a few other tricks to liven up the action on screen. A lot of the film takes place in the shadow of night so it’s a good thing that the black level, and contrast in general, is greatly improved over the older DVD, which was dreary, and way, way too dark at times. In short, the Blu-ray is a sizable improvement, but that’s, as I said before, only because the previous home video release was total trash. “Johnny Handsome” should look better than this. Much better. I imagine if Lionsgate hadn’t slathered the film with noise reduction, then jacked up the sharpness to compensate, it would have. [For reference, my video score is an average of the overall transfer. I’d say that most of the image is "D" territory, except for the last act, which is a solid "C."]
Audio
Lionsgate seems very fond of remixing most of their back-catalogue, especially their action-oriented fare, no matter how obscure, into 5.1 and 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio these days, so it strikes me as odd that they didn’t do so with “Johnny Handsome.” Instead of a equipping the Blu-ray disc with a robust remix which extends far beyond the film's original theatrical audio (Dolby stereo for those wondering), Lionsgate has outfit “Handsome” with a rather plain, but serviceable, English DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio stereo track (a first for the distributor, I think), which maintains the film’s original sound format, but does so thankfully via lossless compression. The audio fares better than the video. For one it’s actually consistent from beginning to end, two dialogue and sound effects are clear and presented without distortion or manipulation, and three, if nothing else, the track is faithful to the original theatrical experience; not a single one of those attributes could be applied to the video (unfortunately). Composer Ry Cooder’s score offers nice backing; it’s bluesy, jazzy and all together rather atmospheric nature is perfectly accented by the new lossless delivery. Is this the most immersive, explosive mix on the market? No, of course not. Parts of the film a pretty flat, sonically speaking and the lack of rear speaker activity is a bit disconcerting during the various shoot outs and car chases – after hearing so many remixes and modern action films it does sound a little off. But, the disc does maintain a serviceable stereo mix that forgoes the usual gimmicks and it isn’t terrible. It isn’t perfect either, but that’s just how it goes. For the record there's a French Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo dub is also included, along with optional English, English for the hearing impaired, Spanish and French subtitles.
Extras
The meat and potatoes of this disc’s supplements are a trio of featurettes, produced by Red Shirt Pictures, the guys behind some really great DVD supplements, like all the material included on "The Monster Squad" (1987) 20th Anniversary Edition as well as the recent “Night of the Creeps” (1984) Director’s Cut, and a number of other special features created for other “B” and “C” movies including a few of the Roger Corman Cult Classics titles from Shout! Factory (for instance, Red Shirt also produced the excellent “Tales from the Lumberyard” documentary that is included on the “Galaxy of Terror” (1981) Special Edition DVD.) The three pieces produced for “Johnny Handsome” were obviously part of a larger documentary at some point, and have only been split up on the Blu-ray to add a few more bullet points on the back of the box. The lack of a "play all" option is lamentable, but on the plus side all of the material is encoded in 1080p high definition. The first of the featurettes is titled “Wordsmith” and is an interview with screenwriter Ken Friedman. Friedman talks about the origins of the project, how he came to be involved, the various studios that the film bounced around to, how they finally found a director, Rourke’s particular style of acting and how the screenplay was adapted for it, as well as the rather large, impressive cast that the filmmakers were able to round up in time for shooting. He seems rather fond – if not outright proud – of his film and comments on the pictures noirish sensibilities (which supposedly were Walter Hill’s idea). 12 minutes 39 seconds. The next featurette, “Eye of the Beholder” looks at the films makeup via an interview with Michael Westmore, the film's special effects makeup artist. Westmore, who’s worked on nearly eighty television and film productions to date (including both the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987-1994) TV series and the subsequent feature films), reminisces about his time on the set of “Johnny Handsome” as well as his other works. He talks about the research that went into creating the makeup and the other superficialities of Johnny’s disease, as well as the difficulties of balancing the grotesque quality of the makeup, with producing something with which audiences would still be able to recognize the actor underneath. 10 minutes 15 seconds. The last featurette, “Action Man” looks at stuntman Allan Graf and his work on the film. Graf talks about the films stunt and practical effects work. He talks car chases, the opening heist, and a few other sequences. He also fondly remembers the day that director Hill actually put him in the film, giving him a chance to act in a quick role (his character dies in the opening scenes). 11 minutes 12 seconds. A rather dull, dated and ugly looking theatrical trailer (1 minute 30 seconds, 1080p) is presented in high definition, although it barely looks it, with plenty of dirt, specks, grime and a bothersome softness (not to mention awful black level). It’s sounds like crap too. Finally, the video photo gallery from the Artisan/Lionsgate DVD has been upgraded to HD, but the images are still pretty small (placed somewhere in the middle of the screen, never fully expanded to the height and width) and mostly of the publicity variety. This isn’t your usual photo gallery, but instead is actually one continuous photomontage running 5 minutes 30 seconds. Lastly, Lionsgate has included their standard Java based bookmarks.
Overall
Regardless what I thought of the film, which I’ll admit I actually quite liked it for what it was, this new Blu-ray is, if incredibly flawed in the video department (see my comments above), a sizeable improvement over the old Artisan and Lionsgate DVD's that you may have in your collection. Not only is the film finally presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio, but there are some new supplements too and the DTS-HD 2.0 track isn’t terrible. After a little over 20 years fans finally have a version of “Johnny Handsome” which might be worth owning, if only because of it’s low, low MSRP and even lower actual sale price. You’ll just have to decide if you like the film enough to watch it in spite of the awful (or at least mostly awful) video.
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