Why So Blu?

No Good Deed (Blu-ray Review)

The poster for this dull home invasion thriller states, “From the Producers of Obsessed,” which gives a pretty good idea of what anyone is getting into with No Good Deed.  I say that meaning the viewer is either aware Obsessed was a really bad, trashy-type thriller or that they don’t even know the movie being referred to, because of how generic the title is.  I certainly see why some can like silly movies like these, ideally recognizing how they are flawed, even while finding them entertaining, but I am not there.  A premise like this is only made worse by the poor effort that went into the making of it, regardless of how committed some of the performances may seem, among few other aspects.  Anyway, now the film has arrived on a Blu-ray disc mastered in 4K.

Film:

No Good Deed centers around an innocent woman (Taraji P. Henson) suffering through a long, rainy night with an escaped convict (Idris Elba).  Things start out innocent enough, as this convict, Colin, pretends to be just a regular guy who was in a car accident and needs to use the phone.  Soon enough, however, Colin shows how dangerous he really is, while the woman, Terri, does all she can to protect herself and her two children also in the house.

I have no desire to delve into the background of this film or speculate on how it developed, but seeing as how it stars Elba and was directed by Sam Miller, who has directed a lot of the BBC series Luther, which stars Elba, a lot of gears begin to turn in terms of what led up to the making of this film.  All of this is basically another way of saying I was far too bored with watching No Good Deed to really care about what was going on in the film, so my mind wandered to other areas.  Not that I did not properly watch the film for the purpose of a review, but yes, it wasn’t the best experience.

Boredom really was the worst enemy for No Good Deed, as the film establishes early on how dangerous Colin is, but then lets us sit around and wait for the inevitable to take place.  In the meantime, very little is offered as a source of entertainment.  Elba and Henson are good actors, so it is easy for them to have conversations with each other and make them sound human, but none of it is all that interesting.  Leslie Bibb steps in as Henson’s character’s best friend, but she is almost insultingly one-dimensional.  All of this and I have not even gotten to all the ridiculous stuff that take place once the film actually gets moving with the action.

At 84 minutes, No Good Deed still felt long, with very little to make it worth the experience.  This falls in line with other cheaply-produced, but slick-looking features designed to make a few bucks, based on the key demographic that will support these films.  It is a PG-13 thriller with no actual thrills, beyond cheap jump scares, and forgettable work from everyone involved, especially since a few of the stars are clearly working on better projects elsewhere.  No good deeds in this film.

Video:

Encoding: AVC MPEG-4

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1

Clarity/Detail: Because No Good Deed was the film that deserved it, Sony has decided to release the film on Blu-ray mastered in 4K for “Maximum Picture and Expanded Color.”  I may have really disliked this movie, but there is no doubt that it looks pretty incredible.  It may be dark and rainy, throughout the film, but it is consistently clear, with every detail looking defined and accurate.

Depth:  There is plenty of three-dimensional pop to be found in this film, with characters running away from each other and placing themselves at odd distances from one another.

Black Levels: No complaints here, as everything is deep and inky.

Color Reproduction: The color palette is consistent, bold, and even quite stunning in some instances, given how stark the general atmosphere of this film is.

Flesh Tones: Characters are all nicely defined.

Noise/Artifacts: Nada.

 

Audio:

Audio Format(s): English, Spanish 5.1 DTS-HD MA, English – Audio Description Track, French 5.1 Dolby Digital

Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish

Dynamics: This lossless soundtrack is pretty much everything it needs to be to make a film like this sound as good as possible, given the clarity of every aspect and the way various channels are used to create the film’s desired atmosphere.

Low Frequency Extension: Soundtrack booms and the storm that takes place throughout this film add some kick to the sub-woofer.

Surround Sound Presentation: Very well-balanced to really do what is needed for this film.

Dialogue Reproduction: Everyone and their bad dialogue is completely clear in this film.

 

Extras:

A few brief featurettes are all you get here, with not real additional insight, beyond making fans of the film a bit more aware of what went down from a cursory point of view.

Features Include:

• Making a Thriller (HD, 12:20) – Standard EPK that goes over many aspects of the film. It’s the best feature here.
• The Thrill of a Good Fight (HD, 6:10) – A look at the ‘action’ in the film.
• Good Samaritan (HD, 4:28) – Some discussion of an aspect of the film involving what lengths to go to in some cases for the sake of the audience.
• Trailers
• UltraViolet Copy of the Film

Summary:

I joked on Twitter about this film, calling it Tyler Perry’s The Guest.  That is basically what this amounts to, as there is very little to praise (nothing, really) and No Good Deed is put together in such an uninspired way that I just could not care less about anything that was really going on.  Even a film like The Call with Halle Berry has something going for it, based on some novel ideas and the filmmaking.  That is a similar film to No Good Deed, but it is slightly better, while this film is just somewhere at the bottom of mainstream 2014 films.

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