Why So Blu?

Gun (Blu-ray Review)

I’ll be honest…I really had extremely low expectations for this movie since the main star is a rapper who also happened to be the screenwriter for the movie. Curtis Jackson also known as “50 cent,” wrote and produced this movie because “…it was a socially conscious story about how guns go from the manufacturing point to retail and purchased by law-abiding citizens and how they fall into the wrong hands.”

Film

The movie opens with a small times arms dealer named Rich ( Curtis Jackson) and his gang ambushing their rival gang at a club.  While their attack successfully eliminated their competition, an innocent waitress was also killed during the firefight which of course becomes a plot point later in the film.  The two cops investigating the case (James Remar and Paul Calderon), are determined to bring Rich to justice in an attempt to stop the constant gun trade going on in Detroit.

It isn’t long before one of Rich’s old cronies named Angel (Val Kilmer) stops by to see if Rich has any work for him.  It turns out that in the past Angel saved Rich’s life so Rich has more faith in Angel that two guys he grew up with which of course causes tension between the gang.  It gets even worse when Angel starts making more money than the others.

Rich is close to moving up to a more prominent higher class position in the underworld thanks to his mistress Gabriella (AnnaLynn McCord) who has been trying to convince her boss Sam Boeddiker (John Larroquette) to work with Rich.  In the meantime, Rich keeps getting involved in bad deals with criminals (Danny Trejo in about 3 minutes of screen time).  With the police closing in and the discovery that there’s a snitch in his gang, it’s only a matter of time before Rich discovers who is loyal and whether or not he can advance to the next level.

Due to my very low expectations of this movie, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  That’s not to say it’s a good movie, but it was better than I expected.  The production was smart enough to populate the film with some good actors like James Remar, Danny Trejo, John Larroquette, and especially Val Kilmer.  How Val Kilmer has sunk so low to appear in movies like this mystified me, and evidently him as well since he walks through this movie like a zombie.

It’s always a shame to see good actors end up doing work beneath them, especially when not so long ago he was doing good work in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.  Now he has gained a lot of weight and seems to not even care anymore.  The movie is formulaic and derivative, with nothing new to offer other than the surprise that it’s not a complete train wreck as expected.

Video 

This 1080p (2.35:1) transfer is acceptable but has many trouble areas.  Colors are dull and the movie has a desaturated look that may have been intentional.  Black levels and contrast are satisfactory for the most part.  Detail is very good and the film has a natural look to it.  Being an independent movie I thought the video quality wouldn’t be very good but this looks professional despite it’s muted palette.

Audio 

I was even more surprised and impressed with this DTS-HS Master Audio 5.1 surround mix.  With a title like Gun, the gunshots better sound good and they do.  A wide variety of weapon fire peppers your speakers and you will have to keep on hand on your remote to balance the loud gunfire with the quiet dialogue.  There is a lot of cross-panning across the channels that works well and the rear speakers are used well for ambiance and the music.  Dialogue is mostly clear but not perfect and far too low for my tastes.  A better balance between the dialogue and the sound effects would have been nice.  All in all, a pretty good track for an independent movie despite its flaws.

Special Features 

There are no special features except for a standard definition trailer.

Final Thoughts 

This is not a great movie but it’s better than you probably think it will be.  That’s not an endorsement of the movie by the way, as overall it’s still disappointing but it does have some decent performances from Larroquette, Remar, and AnnaLynn McCord isn’t hard on the eyes.  I wanted to joke that fans of Curtis Jackson (50 cent) may enjoy this but it’s not even worth 50 cents but I’ll cut him some slack since I think he really meant to raise awareness on how easy it is to get illegal guns.  While the execution of that idea may have failed, it was still a noble intention.  He has plans for eight more movies this year so let’s hope they pan out better than this one.

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