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Released by: Vivendi Entertainment
Released on: September 17, 2013.
Director: Uwe Boll
Cast: Ray Liotta, Dominic Purcell, Erin Karpluk, Cole Coker, Michael Pare
Year: 2013
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The Movie:
In 1954, Lewis Allen made a hardboiled noirish thriller about some bad dudes out to assassinate The President Of The United States called Suddenly with Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden in the lead roles. It's generally regarded as a pretty great movie, a classic really. For some reason, in 2013 Uwe Boll remade the film with Ray Liotta and Dominic Purcell in the lead roles. It generally won't be regarded as a pretty great movie, nor as a classic. It will be regarded as remarkably unremarkable.
The story takes place in the small town of Suddenly where an alcoholic cop named Tod (Ray Liotta) swigs hooch and pines away for the love of hot mom Ellen (Erin Karpluk). She lives at a house with a nice overview of the town below with her rascally son Pidge (Cole Coker) and her squirrelly father, a nice old coot who just isn't very good with electricity. When Tod's not getting loaded and starting fights with the town barber, he's enforcing the law so it makes sense that the secret service guys who have just shown up would stop in for a chat. It seems that The President is going to swing through town and they're going to scoot around and make sure everything is on the up and up before he does. Except that's not what they're going to do at all - they're going to take over Ellen's pad and set up shop because they're crazy guys bitter about the Iraq War or something and they're going to restore America's freedoms by putting a bullet in the POTUS's head.
Of course, no one realizes this at first, these guys are all in black suits and have ID's so why would they question it? But it soon becomes apparent that the man in charge, Barron (Dominic Purcell) is a few meat sammiches short of a picnic basket and wouldn't you know it, Tod's really the only one who can save the day…
As far as the performances go, Liotta is fun in that way Liotta can be fun when he's simply cashing a paycheck. He's obviously investing very little of himself in crafting an interesting character and is instead going for amusingly predictable. The kid who plays Pidge, Cole Coker? He's rascally and all that, he runs quickly and he mouths off well. He's not bad. Erin Karpluk is pretty enough and has an enjoyable MILFish quality to her - you can see why Ray's drunken louse of a cop would be into her, she's cute and she's nice and on this level her performance works. We don't want her to die. Dominic Purcell is actually kind of funny as Barron. He does nothing but scowl and look miserable. He's supposed to be obsessed with preventing the erosion of American freedoms but instead spends most of the movie looking uncomfortable, as if he's just soiled himself or maybe hasn't yet but really needs to.
The movie has very little going for it to make it stand out. It's reasonably well shot and it moves at a good pace. It tells an interesting story but one that we've heard before. Updating it by including cell phones and on Obama lookalike as The President is all well and good but that's about as exciting as shooting it in color - it's an obvious choice when making a movie in 2013. The Canadian locations don't double well for a remote American city, they feel very much like Canada (keep your eyes open for British Columbian license plates if you're so inclined) and the accents on some of the bit part players leave little doubt to anyone paying attention that Herr Boll took off to the Great White North to shoot this puppy.
This is, to be fair, perfectly passable entertainment, but outside of the countless f-bombs, it has a very 'made for TV' feel to it. It's a movie your mom would like if she can handle Ray Liotta saying 'fuck' a lot. Boll's films are often times disastrous but usually very interesting, but with his remake of Suddenly, it's quite the opposite. It's not a disaster, it's competent enough, but it's very generic and it lacks that 'everything but the kitchen sink' lunacy that makes movies like BloodRayne and In The Name Of The King so gosh-darned fun.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Suddenly arrives on Blu-ray in a 1.78.1 widescreen presentation with AVC encoding in 1080p high definition. The locations look appropriately detailed and have that sort of interesting small town look about them, meaning we notice things in the forest, like mold on a tree branch, and in town like paint peeling on a sign. Skin tones are fine, they look pretty natural, while black levels remain dark and quite strong. There aren't any compression artifacts or edge enhancement issues of note and all in all, the movie looks very good here in high definition, despite a few moments that show some banding and aliasing.
The English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix on this release is pretty good, really. The lower end is nice and strong and a few of the more action intensive scenes make good use of the surround channels by toying with gunshots. Otherwise, dialogue is well balanced and mixed in nicely ensuring that you won't have any trouble understanding the performers while the score has some nice liveliness to it. Not much to complain about here, really, this mix suits the movie well and sounds pretty good. Subtitles are provided in English SDH only.
Outside of a few previews for unrelated properties that play before the static menu loads, the only extra included is chapter selection, which isn't really an extra at all.
The Final Word:
Though it lacks the intensity of the original and nobody here comes even close to delivering a performance as interesting as that given by Sinatra the first time around, Uwe Boll's remake of Suddenly is perfectly mediocre. The Blu-ray release from Vivendi looks and sounds fine but contains nary a supplement, making it fairly mediocre as well. If you like mediocre movies offered up on mediocre Blu-ray discs, then this is the release you've been waiting for.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
