SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS
(2012, Blu-ray released February 19, 2013 – MSRP CDN $36.99)
THE FILM:
- “Marty (Colin Farrell) is a struggling writer who is trying to finish his latest screenplay “Seven Psychopaths”. When his dog thieving friends Billy (Sam Rockwell) and Hans (Christopher Walken) unknowingly steal the beloved dog of a psychotic, unpredictable and extremely violent gangster (Woody Harrelson), all hell breaks loose and Marty might just find the inspiration to his screenplay he was looking for… if he lives to tell the tale.“
WHO SHOULD BUY:
The Seven Psychopaths seems like a film from another era. Right from the word go, it’s riffing on popular stylistic tropes of the ’90s, the screen filled with hordes of chatty-Cathy’s chewing some serious fat while treating firearms as if they were another flailing appendage. And, get this, it’s all about a screenwriter looking for his story. Groan. This is the child of Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, born a decade too late.
It might be a little slow in getting to the party but Seven Psychopaths brings the goods, with a lot of fun characters played by a metric crap-load of Hollywood’s best talent. Colin Farrell, unfortunately, is at his least compelling when in the role of a protagonist but luckily the film’s got the manic energies of Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken to keep it firing on all pistons. That is, until it loses the plot in the third act and goes off the rails to nowheres-ville. Honestly, I can’t even tell you what happens at that point because it just wouldn’t stop talking at me and never made any sense. And that’s ultimately its undoing – believing it has so much to say that we’ll stick with it through thick and thin. Sadly, I think self indulgent writing might be the eighth uncredited psychopath in this mix.
THE BLU-RAY DISC:
The movie bugged me. Whatever. It looks like the bomb on Blu-ray! Let’s talk high bitrate, killer transfers here, okay? The Seven Psychopaths Blu has got that nailed. This is a gorgeous transfer that I’d be happy to look at anytime. A feast for the eyes, happily, since it isn’t one for the narrative-hungry part of my brain stem. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is also well put together, if not as in-yo’-face loud and proud as the visual presentation.
Seemingly unlike the US edition of the Blu-ray, our Canadian disc from Alliance includes a short gag reel and 15-minutes worth of fairly decent deleted scenes. Everything else, the 6 featurettes, is pretty much a bust, being so short (1-2-minutes each) that’s it’s almost not worth your time to click.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- 6 Featurettes
- Deleted and Extended Scenes
- Gag Reel
