Cass (Blu-ray) (2008)

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General		Extras
Category	Biopic	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2008
Running Time	108:30
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jon S. Baird
Studio Distributor	Goldcrest Eagle Entertainment	Starring	Nonso Anozie Natalie Press Leo Gregory Gavin Brocker
Case	Amaray Variant
RPI	?	Music	Matteo Scumaci

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English DTS HD High Resolution Audio 5.1 EX English Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	1.66:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Over the past few years English Football Hooligan flicks seem to have arrived in great enough number to amount to their own genre. Though obviously produced with limited means, Cass is an above-average addition to the fold.

    Based on the autobiography of Cass Pennant, the first football hooligan handed a stiff sentence when Thatcher's Britain cracked down on organised hooliganism in the late 1980s, Cass is a drama about a man trying to find himself amidst a fair share of brawling. Cass was a Barnardo's African orphan, adopted by a quiet middle-aged couple in the suburbs of London. The film really picks up during his teen years, when Cass (played by Daniel Kaluuya at that age) just wanted to be a fairly average kid but struggled with being picked on for the colour of his skin. He joins a local mob West Ham supporters and within the space of a few years becomes one of their organisers (by which time Cass has grown up and is played by Nonso Anozie), at which point they re-brand themselves the ICF - the notorious Inner City Firm.

    After a few years of escalating the ICF to one of the lands most feared mobs, Cass eventually finds himself behind bars. In prison, he finds himself lost between the whites and blacks, each of whom sees him as one of the other - a white man with black skin. When he finally gets out, Cass tries to get his life together and start a family but finds that figures from his violent past won't leave him behind.

    Cass is dripping with cult appeal. It tackles a subject matter with a distinct appeal to young men and offers a bit of chest-beating bravado anchored to a surprisingly engaging drama. The direction is clunky and the acting is occasionally all too hammy, but the story and its charismatic central character are solid enough that these glaring faults are easy to ignore (which itself is often a hallmark of cult fare). Most of all the film really captures the feeling of mateship that drives the hooligan culture.

    A number of high profile football hooligan flicks (Green Street Hooligans in particular - coincidentally a film produced by Cass director John S. Baird) have come horrendously unstuck by taking themselves so seriously that they end up just plain silly. Cass does a good job of avoiding this pitfall. Whilst it remains a serious film, it crafts well-enough rounded, believable characters. Characters that react like human beings and see both the funny side of things as well as the serious.

    Cass certainly has its share of faults, but makes for solid b-grade entertainment.

Video

    The film is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio in 1080p. IMDB lists that the original aspect was 1.66:1, although the image does not look stretched or cropped.

    The video looks very good. By no means the best Blu-ray you will find, but a noticeable step up from DVD. The image is clear and reasonably sharp, with only an light level of deliberately gritty film grain over the image. The video feature deep blacks and a good level of shadow detail.

    The film makes good use of a brown/yellow tinged palette, which has translated well onto Blu-ray. The colours are rendered evenly and consistently.

    There is no sign of film artefacts or video compression artefacts in the image.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The film features an English DTS-HD audio track and an English Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 Kbps) audio track.

    Much to the same extent as the video, the audio is very good but not reference material.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand. The audio appears to be well synchronized to the video.

    The surrounds are put to good use, mainly for environmental effects and the score. The subwoofer gets a fair workout.

    The film's score is largely an orchestral-synth affair, with a few classic punk/rock tunes from the era thrown in for good measure.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    All the extras are presented in Standard Definition.

Making of Featurette (28:39)

    A reasonably interesting behind-the-scenes making of featurette. This one gives a good feel for what is going on on-set and features plenty of on-set interviews with cast and crew members, who provide a mixture of sales pitch for the film and Cass Pennant as well as a good explanation of what is going on on-set.

It's a Casual Life Short Film (12:15)

    Director John S. Bairds's original football hooligan short, which is obviously what landed him this opportunity (and Green Street Hooligans). A simple story, but one that is a surprisingly good watch.

Cass Pennant Interview (23:44)

    Cass Pennant (the real one) takes an interview crew on a tour through the streets and areas that he grew up in. Pennant has a real talent for talking and comes across as both excited and a well-meaning bloke. Fascinating stuff.

TV Spots (0:41)

    Three nearly identical TV spots for the film. One would have been enough.

Image Gallery

    A fairly sizeable gallery of promo stills and shots from the film.

    Cass has not been released in the Region A. This release is identical, in terms of content, to the UK release.

    A solid B-picture bio-pic of a hooligan getting his life together. Likely a cult flick in years to come.

    Good quality audio and video presentation and a great range of supplements are presented on the disc.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall