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Poet (The)
R2 - United Kingdom - Bluebell Films Review written by and copyright: Samuel Scott (10th October 2011). |
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The Film
 Director of "The Poet", Paul Hills, first started his career as a producer with an adaptation of Danny Cannon's "Play Dead" for the National Film and Television School. It was a huge success, screening to more than three million viewers on Channel 4, a record at the time for a student film. He later made his directing debut with "Frontline" on a meagre budget of just £12,000 and followed it up with autobiographical "Boston Kickout" which Academy Award winning director Danny Boyle called one of the best British films he had ever seen. After that, he went into commercial and one awards for his Umbro advert "Great Escape". In 2003, he would undertake his most galling task yet, "The Poet", with a five million euro budget and a relatively well-known cast. The synopsis from Bluebell Films reads: Rick (Andrew Lee Potts – Primeval), a promising young artist, inadvertently enters an active crime scene and is gunned down in central Vienna by hired assassin, Andrei Loesin (Dougray Scott – Mission Impossible II). When Andrei visits the opening of a show of the dead artist he becomes fascinated with his life and starts a relationship with Rick’s sister, Paula (Laura Elena Harring – Mulholland Drive). Detective Inspector Vashon (Jurgen Prochnow – Das Boot) investigates the murder. Can Andrei free himself from the relationship before Vashon catches him or will Andrei confess his crime to Paula? The Poet is a lyrical tragedy set in France, Austria and Germany, poetically directed by Paul Hills (Boston Kickout, Do Elephants Play). Unfortunately, "The Poet" is a poorly written, contrived, badly acted mess of a film. One of the biggest problems is the cast. Despite well-known names such as Laura Elena Harring, Dougray Scott, Jürgen Prochnow and Andrew Lee Potts, there are no stand-out performances (though at least Prochnow is passable). Dougray Scott is particularly poor mainly due to the hilariously bad Russian accent and for me, that is a disappointment as Scott is an actor you can usually depend on to put in a solid appearance. Laura Elena Harring phones her lines in and looks as though she can't wait to leave and was obviously only there for a paycheque, especially having been on a good run with Mulholland Drive, John Q and Willard. Another huge problem is the complete lack of direction. It actually starts promising enough and looks as though it is going to be an entertaining thriller or at least suspenseful enough to keep you watching. Unfortunately, it seems to also want to be a romance and a drama at the same time but moves from genre-to-genre in such a blasé nonchalant fashion it loses what little appeal it picks up in the intriguing opening ten minutes. The script is also lacking in all aspects. It's not very tight and the dialogue could've been written by a fifteen year old work experience kid on demand for the director. Somehow, this was fairly successful in Germany and Austria but perhaps the was more to do with the presence of Prochnow and the setting of Vienna (which does make way for some nice looking location shots). In the end, this isn't good enough to be a TV movie-of-the-week for some obscure Sky channel. It's not the worst film ever made though, and there are many nice shots by Hills throughout with nice little touches and good use of lighting. It also has a very eighties gritty feel to it at times, but the story just fails to materialise.
Video
"The Poet" is being released by Bluebell Films with an anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer, which I believe is the original aspect ratio. It's a servicable transfer without being anything to shout home about and at the same time, with nothing to complain about. It lacks sharpness throughout and has occasional grain, but overall it's good enough.
Audio
Just the one option, an English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track. Seperation is minimal but it is a dialogue driven film. Still, a film that tries to build suspense should find it easier with a 5.1 track to help build a tense atmosphere. Like the picture, the audio is serviceable and I have no real complaints. No subtitles have been included.
Extras
After watching the film, I didn't really want to listen to the audio commentary with director Paul Hills and cinematographer Roger Bonnici but I have to admit that I am glad I did as this is easily the highlight of the disc and maybe goes some way to explaining how the movie became a bit of a mess. Refreshingly candid, it is a joy to listen to as they give us a mixture of what happened on set, a lot of technical shot information (without going over the heads of those without camera knowledge) and, best of all, telling us how creative control was practically non-existant for Hills as producers went their own direction with what got shot and what made the final cut. A fascinating listen though it would also be nice to hear the thoughts of the producers. Next up, we get a selection of six deleted scenes: - "Jogging" (0:55) - "Rick's Death" (0:46) - "The Morgue" (2:05) - "The Opera" (3:22) - "Paula in Toilet" (1:33) - "The End" (2:13) Well, they aren't anything worth watching and with this film, the more that was removed, the better the experience would've been. A short four minute "Behind the Scenes" featurette features some b-roll footage and interviews. It's not very insightful and far too short to bother with. Finally, we get a couple of standard trailers: - "Official Trailer" (1:54) - "Director's Trailer" (2:01)
Overall
It's bad film that lacks direction and seems shoddily put together but the excellent commentary included on the disc goes some way as to explaining why. If you're interested in the behind-the-scenes incidents and battles for scenes, you might want to pick this up solely for said commentary but if not, skip this release.
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