Tomorrow You’re Gone (Blu-ray Review)
For Charlie Rankin, all he wanted was a chance to begin a new life. Fate – and other forces – had different plans. Rankin (Dorff) is out of prison, but not out of trouble. Indebted to the man who saved his life behind bars (Dafoe), Charlie must now carry out a murder to settle the score. But things start to change for Charlie when he meets Florence (Monaghan), a mysterious and beautiful lost soul who sees the good hidden beneath his tough exterior. When the hit goes bad, it’s Charlie’s life that is on the line, and he’ll have to figure out how to settle his debts – and keep Florence out of danger – before his past catches up to him. Directed by David Jacobson (Down In The Valley), the film stars Stephen Dorff (Blade), Michelle Monaghan (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Source Code) and Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man Trilogy). Tomorrow You’re Gone shows how far a man will go to clear the debt he owes and save the one he loves.
Film 
I have to admit that the only reason I wanted to review this film is primarily because of Michelle Monaghan who was so good in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Willem Dafoe who is always interesting to watch. I suspected that this direct to video film wouldn’t be that good but I gave it the benefit of the doubt because of the cast. I should have gone with my first instinct. Tomorrow You’re Gone (or Boot Tracks depending on where it’s released), is a terrible slow moving film that has so little going on during it’s run time that you could walk away and do some laundry and return only to discover after rewinding the movie that you didn’t miss anything at all. I honestly don’t know how this project was able to obtain this cast as the script is terrible, the direction from David Jacobson (Down in the Valley) is lazy and uninspired, and the film itself looks grungy and low rent. Watching this movie, you feel like you’ve spent several hours in purgatory and in need of a shower to wash the grime away.
I’m guessing that must be how Charlie Rankin (Stephen Dorff) must feel at the start of the movie while he is chilling in prison. During his stay while waiting to complete his sentence, Charlie gets a letter from his boss/mentor “The Buddha” (Willem Dafoe) who in a coded message tells Charlie to kill someone once he gets out of prison. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I’ve spent several years in prison, the last thing I would want to do is go kill someone and risk going back to prison, but that’s pretty much exactly what Charlie sets out to do. The character as played by Dorff only has one expression which is a grimace and not much else going on for him. There’s hints that he suffered some bad things happening to him awhile ago, but this incoherent plot never really goes into any real detail.
Amazingly enough, this anti-social simpleton whose every fiber of personality should warn others away, actually gets picked up by a cute girl on the bus named Florence Jane (Michelle Monaghan) who somehow ignores all common sense by inviting a total stranger to her house. Florence it turns out is a part time porn actress, a fact that she seems fairly proud of as the first thing she does is show him one of her sex videos. So let’s recap so far…Florence meets a homeless looking stranger on the bus who looks like he should be called Rapist #1 and invites him back to her house where she shows him a video of her having sex with other people. And then she tries to seduce him and he turns her down! In fact, Charlie spends a good amount of time in this movie turning down this cute woman’s overtures which is fairly surprising for a dude that just got out of a long stretch in prison. Plausible? I don’t think so.
The movie was so slow, that it gave me time to ponder these kind of side tangents in my mind. In the absence of a plot, my mind started to fabricate one myself just to keep myself entertained while Dorff continually looked like he just crapped his pants and couldn’t do anything about it. It’s one thing to depend on atmosphere if you’re characters are lacking, but if you go that route you better deliver that atmosphere in spades. There’s no sense of foreboding or dread here or anything to be honest. This movie was interminable, and you know it’s bad when even Michelle Monaghan in frequent degrees of being undressed couldn’t save this movie. This entire movie is like a tar pit and it just sucked down the actors and by extension, the foolish audience who came too close to escape it as well. While this movie didn’t reach Troll 2 depths of torture, it seemed like I served every second of Charlie’s prison sentence with him.
Video
It’s a little hard to rate the video for this movie because the drab look of the film was deliberately done by the filmmakers. This 1080p (2.35:1) transfer doesn’t really display a whole lot of colors because of that creative decision, but every once it awhile some color splashes onscreen to show how it could look if allowed. The film was shot with a Arri Alexa digital camera by Michael Fimognari and the image (although bland) does come across looking sharp and detailed. Every bit of grunge is captured, both on the actors and in the world they inhabit. Close ups look especially good and provide a lot of detail on the actor’s faces. There are some rough looking scenes and some questionable POV shots as well, but those are also there deliberately to portray Charlie’s possible delusional state. Black levels are solid and inky and the rest of the image is largely free of defects or other issues.
Audio
For a movie experience that equals watching paint dry, I do have to admit that this DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix offers more entertainment than the movie. The dialogue is always clear and the rear channels are well used to illustrate Charlie’s mental state with some cool surround effects. The subwoofer occasionally makes an appearance especially when Charlie goes to a club looking for “The Buddha.” While most of the movie is quiet, when there are gunshots, they sound immediate and real. The moody score by Peter Salett isn’t that memorable, but it suits this movie and it comes across well without drowning out the dialogue.
Extras 
Surprise surprise, there are no extras included unless you count trailers for better movies.
Summary
Tomorrow You’re Gone is a painfully slow and boring movie that could and should have been better. It has some talented actors in it but they are all wasted here in a movie that doesn’t really amount to much of anything. The Blu-ray benefits in comparison to the movie as it provides at least good video and audio quality. Although I usually would like to see some extras on every Blu-ray, I have to admit that I’m happy that there weren’t any on this because I really didn’t want to spend any further time with this movie at all.
Order below if you must!
Comments are currently closed.