Faces in the Crowd (Blu-ray) (2011)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Main Menu Audio-Live action and music from score.
Rating
Year Of Production	2011
Running Time	102:16
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Julien Magnat
Studio Distributor	Mindseye Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Julien Magnat Milla Jovovich Sarah Wayne Callies Julian McMahon Michael Shanks Adam Harrington Sandrine Holt
Case	?
RPI	$39.95	Music	John McCarthy

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 English Linear PCM 48/20 2.0
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, Character close-ups

     I guess there is no other reason to see Faces in the Crowd than that it stars Milla Jovovich. The unquestionably luscious Miss Jovovich has a niche in contemporary cinema, rather akin to that of Johnny Weissmuller in the 1940s. Her action star vehicles, Resident Evil and Ultraviolet, have an enthusiastic following, but I guess as she grows older she wants to further establish herself as a credible actress. For instance, she recently popped up as Lady de Winter in the latest The Three Musketeers, and here we have her as the centrepiece in a thriller that would have fitted Ashley Judd like a well worn glove. Miss Jovovich is such a bad actress, and the script and general performance of this otherwise mediocre film so laughable, that Faces in the Crowd is mostly enjoyable for all the wrong reasons.

    The primary culprit has to be Julien Magnat, who both wrote and directed this awful film. Magnat has worked mainly in TV (The Garfield Show), and has only one other feature to his credit, Bloody Mallory in 2002. Magnat's heroine here is Anna Marchant (Milla Jovovich), a young - only just - woman who has it all. She is a confident, respected schoolteacher, has recently set up house with her presentable boyfriend Bryce (Michael Shanks / Red Riding Hood) and goes out for drinks with her two best girl friends, Nina (Valentina Vargas / The Name of the Rose) and Francine (Sarah Wayne Collies / The Walking Dead). One night on her way home from a night with the girls, Anna sees a young man attacking and then killing a young woman.Anna stays hidden, but her cell phone rings, the killer sees her and goes after the witness to his crime. The man chases her onto a bridge, and, desperately trying to escape, Anna falls, is severely knocked on the head, and gazes up into the killer's face as she falls into the river. In hospital and conscious, Anna is physically OK, but she now has Prosopagnosia, a condition in which there is an impairment in the ability to recognize faces. The police, led by handsome, overweight detective Sam Kerrest (Nip/Tuck's Julian McMahon), enlist Anna in seeking out this serial killer, known as Tearjerk Jack. Unfortunately Anna's condition makes it impossible for her to recognize any face, even  in moment to moment intimacies with Bryce. So far so good, but here the problem of decent writing again rears its head. There is a reasonable idea, but the writer, who is the director as well, has no idea what to do with it. Anna's condition is diagnosed by Dr Langenkamp (Marianne Faitfull), a character name and performance more suited to an episode of the old Benny Hill Show. Miss Faithfull (1969's Hamlet) is horrendously bad - and the character is blind, for absolutely no dramatic reason. I guess instead of going to the trouble of writing a character it is much easier to simply make a person blind, or deaf, or a dwarf, and just leave it at that. Anyway, under Dr Langenkamp's instruction Anna is given "strategies" that allow her to feign recognition of  people. Out for a night socialising with Bryce, she draws the ties of all the men with whom she comes into contact. Her drawings are pretty good, and she obviously has a very large box of crayons in her purse, because she has a rainbow of colours in her neat little pad drawings. Of course, there is a problem when two guys are wearing the same tie. The makers have opted to have different actors portray the same character, switching the actor as Anna is incapable of recognizing his or her face. The result is that, according to the end credits, Bryce goes up to "Bryce #10" with ten different actors employed, and similarly for Nina and Francine. This makes for enormous confusion, both for Anna and for any audience member foolish enough to actually try and work out what's going on. In reality, of course, the faces of the characters aren't changing at all. The faces remain the same, but Anna is not able to recognize them. The confusion then, is all in Anna's head, but this would have taken some acting ability on the part of the beautiful Miss Jovovich.

    Technically the film is workmanlike. The photography is in the capable hands of Rene Ohashi, with thirty years experience, much of it TV including a couple of Tom Selleck Jesse Stone telemovies. The scenes in the streets at night are luminously dark and deep, by far the best thing in the movie. Also with TV experience is composer John McCarthy, whose score hits the right note more frequently than the actors on screen.The best performance comes from Julian McMahon, and that is probably because he has to appear solid and resolute throughout. The scenes in which  Milla Jovovich has to register terror, gun held in a wildly shaking hand, have to be seen to be believed. She brought back memories of the wonderful Willie Best terrified by the zombie in The Ghost Breakers, way back in 1940.

    Faces in the Crowd is a silly, confusing film, which is also very poorly directed and acted. The basic premise is fine, and a decent writer may have been able to make an absorbing psychological thriller from the situation. What we have before us is just ratty enough to be enjoyable. The disc looks and sounds fine, and there are no extras.

Video

    This film is made much wore watchable due to the quality of the transfer.

    Presented at the ratio of 1.78:1 in a 1080p transfer, the image is extremely sharp, with brilliantly detailed closeups and urban exteriors. The widescreen image is  impressive in its vivid colours, the early schoolroom scenes and neonlit, rainy cityscapes benefitting from the extensive palette employed. Skin tones are excellent. Blacks are deep and solid with excellent shadow detail, except in  one very grey shot in the bridge climax of the film. This is a very fine transfer without any other obvious faults.

    There are English Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired which were sampled and found to be excellent. Two colours are used to differentiate between speakers, with appropriate placement across the image.A third colour is used for sound effects, such as ringing phones.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

   There are two English audio streams : DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 

                                                             PCM Stereo Surround Encoded

  The feature was watched employing the DTS-HD 5.1 track, which gave an immersive and very satisfying aural experience.

  Dialogue was generally front and centre, although there was some movement of voices into the left and right channels. Dialogue was crisp and clean and without any sync problems.

  Front and rear channels are extremely active with ambient noises, with the sounds of the city, bars, and schoolroom all filling the listening space. Special effects also come from the rears and subwoofer, as the heroine is terrified by the serial killer. John McCarthy's appropriately atmospheric score is given the full surround treatment, with nice oomph coming from the subwoofer.

    The Descriptive Narration for the Vision Impaired was sampled and found to be excellent, delivered by a sedate, youngish male voice. The exhaustive description of the logos of the various production companies involved is remarkable.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

This is a bare-bones release.

Start-Up Trailers :

On start-up we are served up three trailers,  all presented at 2.40:1 in 1080p and looking excellent. Annoyingly, I could not avoid having to run these trailers every time I started the disc.

Abduction (2:23) 

Conan the Barbarian (2:09)

Warriors (2:26)  

Main Menu

    The menu is presented over art work involving a large closeup of the star, with an insert live montage of scenes from the film. A section of the original score provides the audio.

   Setup : The options presented are :  Play Movie

                                                         Chapters Select :  Selection brings up a strip of eighteen thumbnailed chapters.

                                                         Setup : Captions : Descriptive Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired : On / Off

                                                         Audio Description : Descriptive Narration for the Vision Impaired : On / Off

                                                         Audio Selection : PCM Stereo : On / Off

                                                                                     DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 : On / Off    

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    There are two Blu-ray editions released in Region 1.

    The single disc release is identical to the local release with the addition of Spanish subtitles.

    The two-disc release adds a standard DVD copy and a digital copy.

   This is a very "B" grade movie - maybe even a "C". The star has severely limited dramatic ability, and she is certainly not helped by the writing or the direction. The depiction of the heroine's "illness" is very confusing, to say the least, and does not stand up to scrutiny or logic. The photography of the city setting is very fine and the disc looks and sounds very good indeed. If you enjoy a really bad movie, get a drink and some nibblies and sit back and appreciate the photogenic, untalented Milla Jovovich. There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall