Redirected (Blu-ray) (2014)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Trailer-x 5 for other Eagle Entertainment titles
Rating
Year Of Production	2014
Running Time	98:55
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Emilis Velyvis
Studio Distributor	Eagle Entertainment	Starring	Vinnie Jones John Scott Williams Gil Darnell Anthony Strachan Oliver Jackson Monika Vaiciulyte
Case	Standard Blu-ray
RPI	?	Music	Paulius Kilbauskas Domas Strupinskas

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     Four friends plan to rob an illegal London casino and to fly out afterwards to Malaysia to enjoy the sun, the beaches and the sex. The four are John (Gil Darnell), the leader, Ben (Anthony Strachan), a bear of a bloke, Tim (Oliver Jackson), a wimp and vegan and Michael (John Scott Williams) who has been unwittingly and reluctantly shanghaied. The robbery succeeds and the group board their flight but due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland the flight is diverted to Vilnius, Lithuania and all the passengers off-loaded. Some of the guys decide to have a bit of fun at a disco while Michael only wants to return to his girlfriend in London. John thinks he has got lucky with the sexy blonde Simona (Monika Vaiciulyte) but is assaulted and left naked and handcuffed to a radiator, Ben and Tim wildly party on and awake to find themselves in a farm 300 km from Vilnius amid animals and people smugglers while Michael runs into trouble with a corrupt and murderous policeman. Meanwhile, the operator of the casino and owner of the money, the man known as the Golden Pole (Vinnie Jones), has discovered that the robbers are in Lithuania and travels out with his thugs to seek retribution.

     Redirected presents itself as a crime / comedy with goofy situations and quirky characters. It tosses together missing money, corrupt police, prostitutes, a randy priest, standover men, violent ambulance drivers, an overweight bride, people smugglers, thugs, gangsters, coincidences, a wedding and a naked man running around chained to a radiator all of which it thinks is wacky but which more often comes across as silly. There are also sight gags, slapstick comedy, a fart joke, comedy based on language misunderstandings as well as non-PC jokes about colour, gays and an overweight woman. The film also feels disjointed; for much of the running time John, Michael and Ben and Tim have separate and independent misadventures with the locals, so that one strand of the story or other disappears for quite some time. The story strands are brought together in the end by the Vinnie Jones character and a wedding, but it all feels rather rushed and incoherent.

     Redirected is a British / Lithuanian production directed by a Lithuanian (Emilis Velyvis), filmed mainly in Lithuania with Lithuanian financing, Lithuanian composers and a Lithuanian cast except for the English principals. The film was apparently a big success in Lithuania, which is a bit surprising given that the it is hardly a tourist advertisement for the country because that the English visitors are robbed, beaten, ill-treated by the locals and preyed upon by a corrupt policeman!

     With the possible exception of the character played by John Scott Williams, the others, both British and Lithuanian, are clichéd and unlikeable so the focus of Redirected is to show how these unlikeable characters come to grief. Vinnie Jones gets top billing but in reality it is not his film and he has little to do although it is his character that brings the separate story strands together.

Video

     Sadly, Redirected is another Eagle Entertainment film presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, cropped from the 2.35:1 original ratio. It is not, however, a film that uses a lot of widescreen shots, so the cropping is not as noticeable as in some other films. The print is 1080p using the MPEG-4 AVC code.

     This is a nice crisp print. Detail is good, colours are glossy but natural, skin tones good and without that digital yellowish tinge, blacks are solid, shadow detail good, brightness and contrast consistent.

     There is some ghosting with movement but marks and other artefacts are absent.

     There are no subtitles, although white subtitles come on automatically for the substantial sections of non-English dialogue.

     One point is deducted from the video score in line with site policy.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     Audio is an English DTS-HD MA 5.1, with substantial sections of Lithuanian and some Polish and Russian.

     Dialogue was generally clear, although sometimes when the Lithuanian cast are speaking English it can be a bit hard to understand. Much of the audio is front oriented and the rears provide mostly music, although they did occasionally add ambient sounds or aircraft and car engines, including pans. The sub-woofer added some bass to the music, engines and gunshots.

     The rock oriented score by Paulius Kilbauskas and Domas Strupinskas was effective.

     I did not notice any lip synchronisation issues.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Start-up Trailers

     Trailers for A Good Marriage (1:51), Saints and Soldiers: Battle of the Tanks (2:25), Goodbye World (1:49), Plus One (2:26) and The Appearing (1:47) play on start-up. They cannot be selected from the menu.

     There is not currently a US Region A or UK Region B Blu-ray of Redirected listed on Amazon.com. There is however a Region 2 UK DVD which is in the correct aspect ratio of 2.35:1 but which seems to have substantial distracting combing errors. I suppose a UK Blu-ray is likely to be in the correct ratio, but for now our Blu-ray is the only one available.

     One can see what Redirected is trying to do but it really throws everything, including the kitchen sink, into a mix of ludicrous situations, clichéd characters, sight gags, slapstick, gunfights and violence in what is essentially a standard plot. It is silly and disjointed but with so many different situations, characters, gags and jokes some do work so the film is amusing in places.

     The video is good, except for being in the incorrect aspect ratio, the audio is fine. Trailers for other films are the only extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall