Mercury Plains (Blu-ray) (2016)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Trailer-x 5 for other films
Rating
Year Of Production	2016
Running Time	102:06
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Charles Burmeister
Studio Distributor	Eagle Entertainment	Starring	Scott Eastwood Nick Chinlund Austin Park Angela Sarafyan Justin Arnold
Case	Standard Blu-ray
RPI	?	Music	Austin Wintory

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
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

     Mitch (Scott Eastwood) is a young unemployed man in a small, dead end Texas town living with his sister, his mother and his mother’s boyfriend. With a friend he crosses the border into Mexico for a night out but his friend abandons Mitch in a bar, leaving him with the tab and in trouble with the locals. Coming off worse for wear, in the morning Mitch meets Jesse (Austin Park) and is introduced to The Captain (Nick Chinlund). The Captain may be FBI and is recruiting men for a group to take down people who are running drugs into the USA.

     Mitch agrees reluctantly and is taken to The Captain’s ranch in the Mexican desert where he finds a very amateurish para-military group without weapons and consisting primarily of young teens. Mitch bristles at the discipline and comes to realise that rather than fighting the drug cartels The Captain is really about getting rich, even going so far as to attempt to hijack a Mexican police van. When the Mexican police quickly respond Mitch has to try to get back to the USA, hopefully with some of the loot.

     Mercury Plains is a rambling and somewhat unfocussed film from director / writer Charles Burneister, whose only other feature film was Columbus Day in 2008. Mercury Plains starts off as a film about fighting the drug cartels in Mexico, but then throws in some quasi-military discipline (aka Full Metal Jacket (1987)), a solitary confinement sweat box (The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) or The Great Escape (1963)), a couple of heist sequences, a superfluous love interest and ends with a man-on-man chase / hunt across the desert (any number of westerns). A lot of it is pointless, compounded by an almost complete lack of backstory, motivation or character development. Scott Eastwood looks like his more famous father and has some of Clint’s iconic smile. He tries hard with the material and is worth watching, as is experienced actor Nick Chinlund, but they are defeated by a meandering plot that really does not know what it wants to be.

     Mercury Plains is at its best when it is creating atmosphere. The opening sequence of a small, dying Texas town with boarded up shops, rusted machinery and abandoned premises is economically done and the film is helped immensely by some beautiful widescreen images of the desert landscapes and colourful sunsets, courtesy of DP Phillip Roy, and the good score by Austin Wintory. The film, however, provides nothing that has not been done before, and better.

Video

     Mercury Plains is presented in the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, in 1080p using the MPEG-4 AVC code.

     This is a fine looking print. Detail is sharp and clean, colours are bright and glossy but never unnatural, with desert landscapes and vibrant red / yellow sunsets that look beautiful. Blacks and shadow detail are very good, skin tones natural, brightness and contrast consistent.

     I did not notice any artefacts or marks.

     There are no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
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Audio

     Audio is English DTS-HD MA 5.1.

     Dialogue is clear. This is not a particularly enveloping audio track and the rears are limited to music, ambient effects such as insect noises, and engines. Gunshots were sharp. The sub-woofer was not overused, but provides some support for engines, gunshots and crashes.

     The score by Austin Wintory, utilising guitar and mandolin, supported to the visuals nicely.

     There are no lip synchronisation issues.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Trailers

     Trailers for Mythica: A Quest For Heroes (2:20), All the Wilderness (1:59), Break Point (2:20), Electric Slide (2:16) and Grassland (1:58) play on start-up. They cannot be selected from the menu.

     Amazon.com only lists DVDs of Mercury Plains in both the US and UK. A review of the US DVD indicates that it includes as extras an audio commentary by the writer / director which is said to be decent, and 5 deleted scenes. For Blu-ray however, the Australian release seems to be the only option at present.

     Drug Wars and child para-militaries should made for a compelling and potent story but Mercury Plains does nothing with the premise nor provides anything by way of character development or motivation. Still, there are some impressive widescreen images to watch and the relationship between Scott Eastwood and Nick Chinlund is interesting. But if you do want a film that focuses on the drug wars on and across the US / Mexico border try Cartel Land or Sicario (both 2015).

     The video is good and audio fine; there are no extras except trailers for other films.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall