The Good

An interesting film that always tries to keep viewers guessing.

The Bad

I guess this movie upped the ante to the point that things became a little too heightened.A Perfect Getaway from director David Twohy isn't anything new in filmic terms. A couple (Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich) are backpacking on their honeymoon. They come across another couple who is scared stiff because of some murders that happened on the island they are exploring. Now, most people would probably cut their losses and head for a safer area, but our protagonists meet up with 2 other couples and low and behold things start to go really bad. An adult version of Lord of the Flies ensues where nobody trusts anybody, and our main characters suddenly find themselves fighting to survive. Things remain pretty typical from here on out, yet there is just enough action and witty banter to keep this 98 minute (108 minutes if you watch the unrated version) film interesting.

The last David Twohy movie that I watched was The Arrival. He has since been in the world of Vin Diesel and seemed to have come out of that with no less a taste for grand scale filmmaking. A Perfect Getaway e testament to that.

Features

Original Scripted Ending

I am reticent to talk too much about this because there are certainly people that have not seen this movie. They also probably haven't seen the scripted ending so to say something could compromise the integrity of what viewers don't know before they watch the movie. Let me just say that if you have seen the movie you will certainly want to view this. I don't know if I would call what we see shocking but it could start a debate about how this movie should have concluded. Twohy is one of those directors that goes for pure entertainment above everything else. He understands the bigness of cinema and it is apparent that is how he wanted to present this film.

BD Live

There isn't too much to report on here. There's trailers and other things that Universal has put up but all in all it doesn't seem like they are doing much to expand the experience of this movie. More to the point, it seems like this offering is more to get users to access Uni's website and one doesn't need BD-Live for that!

Video

Video codec: VC-1. Video resolution: 1080p. Aspect ratio: 2.35:1. Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1. Color BD - 50. This movie looked really good. I found that Twohy and his director of photography Mark Plummer didn't really favor any colors in how this movie was composed. It seemed like they just wanted to place viewers on the island and then let the story and the shot compositions take over. This movie is very visual and that is aided by the fact that the island is like another character in the movie. It is as if it is a blank slate and the characters are paint that is splattered across it.

Audio

Audio - English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. French: DTS 5.1. Spanish: DTS 5.1. English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. French: DTS 5.1. Subtitles - English SDH, French, Spanish. The sound on this disc was a lot like the picture. It is very present, it underscores what we are seeing on the screen, but it never gets in the way of the characters or the action we are seeing. I didn't hear anything that was that amazing in the audio design, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some good stuff going on below the surface, right? Things were crisp, I had no problems understanding the characters, and all of this coalesced to make for a very solid Blu-ray watching experience.

Package

Zahn, Jovovich, Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez are all present and accounted for on this front cover. The back serves up 4 more images from this film, a well written description of what A Perfect Getaway is about, a Special feature listing, credits list and technical specs that us Blu-ray nerdniks care a lot about!

Final Word

All in all this movie was better than I thought it would be. Looking at the cast this doesn't surprise me too much. I have always thought Steve Zahn was underrated. Timothy Olyphant is generally always good in the projects he does. And, who doesn't want to watch Milla Jovovich in a movie that takes place on an island? Add to this that director David Twohy knows how to make a film and you have a recipe for success. This movie was made for about $14 million and I believe it did $16 million worldwide. It probably lost money on its release, but I am willing to bet that those sins will be forgiven in the realm of DVD and in this case Blu-ray D.

This movie is nothing if not scenic. People looking to see what their Blu-ray players are capable of will be more than happy to give this release a spin.