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Released by: Anchor Bay Entertainment
Released on: November 12th, 2013.
Director: Moustapha Akkad
Cast: Anthony Quinn
Year: 1977
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The Movie:
Moustapha Akkad is best know as one of the driving forces behind the HALLOWEEN franchise as a producer but he was also a gifted director in his own right. THE MESSAGE, which is about the life of Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was his most famous film.
THE MESSAGE is an interesting endeavor and certainly well made and highly technically competent. It also features a strong performance by Anthony Quinn as Mohammed's uncle. The film deals with Mecca in the 7th century - in the grip of massive worship of idols and corrupted by immoral political and religious leaders. The future prophet is visited by the angel Gabriel in a vision and asked to lead a rebellion against the evil forces of the ungodly and unjust.
One of the aspects that makes THE MESSAGE difficult to deal with on a dramatic level is how it is hobbled by certain conventions forced upon it. To avoid serious trouble (which the film ran into anyway but more on that in a minute) director Akkad was forced to never show the prophet's likeness nor allow his voice to be heard. In addition, his closest relatives get the same treatment. This leads us to Quinn - as the uncle - left to tell the tale. It also means we have weird cuts to first person POV intermittently as well as actors responding to unheard dialog. Despite all this, there were incidents of both financial disruptions in the funding of the film and a hostage taking that occurred in Washington, D.C. In 1977 to protest the work.
How one reacts to THE MESSAGE is honestly going to have a lot to do with your personal beliefs. Rated simply as "entertainment", as bizarre as that sounds, it is an efficient and well shot film. There are obvious touches of excessive melodrama and certain more, ahem, problematical aspects of Mohammed's family life are strenuously underplayed - but that is to be expected. Akkad was clearly a Muslim making a film celebrating his faith. Taken as such THE MESSAGE works on its merits as well as THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
The battle scenes are quite well staged and the script manages to balance the religious piety with the "soap opera" aspects reasonably well. The multinational cast is strong and the location shooting - mostly in North Africa and Libya, is striking. In one of the more bizarre twists in the films history when the funding was initially cut, Libyan strongman Gaddafi stepped in to provide the money needed to finish the project. At close to three hours and with a lot of huge scenes this is a true epic.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Let us get right to the very bad news here.
The transfer for this is a devil's brew of bad interlacing (despite what it says on the back cover this is NOT 1080p), improper framing and cropping (shrunk to 1.78:1 from its native 2.39:1framing), weak black levels, probable overuse of denoising software and flat color definition. The interlacing also screws with motion noticeably. Detail is poor and print damage even pops up out of the sandbox here and there. I'd go on but hey - we do very good screencaps here at RSP so by all means have a look. And weep.
Audio is a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless track that manages to attain the lofty status of below average compared to the video. Highs are cramped and not pleasing to the ear and the use of the surround soundstage poor. It gets the job done - barely.
Extras? Zilch. Which is a shame - this is a film that could have had some really interesting supplements.
The Final Word:
The film itself is interesting and a worthwhile watch for a few reasons detailed above. It cannot be recommended in this poor edition however.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
