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Released by: Sony
Released on: 8/24/2010
Director: Nash Edgerton
Cast: David Roberts, Claire van der Boom
Year: 2008
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The Movie:
Hey kids, like noirish thrillers with awesome and truly unexpected twists? Get off on gritty, yet wholly effective cinematography and dig on flawless and convincing performances? Then Nash Edgerton's 2008 film, The Square, an Australian import now made available domestically by Sony Pictures, is the movie for you.
The film follows a middle aged man named Ray (David Roberts) and his foxy, younger mistress, Carla (Claire van der Boom), as they carry out an affair unbeknownst to their respective spouses. The fact that they live across the river from one another and that Carla's boxer tends to want to visit Ray's poodle can make things awkward now and then, but for the most part they're fairly careful about how and when they meet. When Carla learns that her white trash husband, who everyone just calls Smithy (Anthony Hayes), has got a bag stashed in the attic filled to the brim with cold hard cash, she and Ray decide to steal the bag and hire an arsonist to burn the house down when nobody is at home.
They pick the night of a local Christmas concert to do the deed, as both couples will be there enjoying the entertainment and the house will be empty - or so they thought. Things get complicated when they learn that Carla's mother in law stopped by unexpectedly. Ray tries to call it off before the fire is light, but it doesn't work and things just go horribly, horribly wrong for all involved from there on out.
An almost perfect slow burn of a film, The Square plays like an early Coen Brothers picture without the quirk or dark humor. With one simple error in judgment we watch, on the edge of our seats, as a chain of events is set into motion that changes the lives of each and every one of the characters in the film, from the two leads to the bit part players that you'll forget about until the picture's conclusion. The script is quite meticulous in its detail and its character development and the performances capture all the subtle nuances required to make a story like this work. We not only share in Ray and Carla's increasing frustration but also feel the sadness of Ray's wife as she notices the glances paid by her husband to the younger and prettier woman he sees her in a friend's garage with. Little bits like this are littered throughout the film and only serve to help layer the picture and reward those who pay close attention to such things.
A dark and gritty picture both literally and metaphorically, The Square doesn't move as quickly as some might want it to but pushing the film along any faster than Edgerton has here would have forced it and ruined the effect. Seeing just how everything plays out here is where most of the enjoyment and almost all of the rich, thick, palpable suspense comes from. The careful camera work and basic but effective set ups frame the action simplistically but help to create a very realistic atmosphere which, again, just makes everything that much more tense and, by the time the end credits role, rather devastating.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Sony offers up The Square in a good AVC encoded 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen 1080p high definition transfer that shows off all the graininess and grittiness that the filmmakers obviously wanted in the image. The film isn't the most colorful picture ever made, it uses a lot of earth tones and so grays and browns are predominant, but these hues are reproduced quite naturally as are skin tones and black levels. Detail levels won't melt your eyes but close up shots look pretty good as do textures. This doesn't really pop the way some HD offerings do, but it looks pretty solid.
The English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix on this disc is a surprisingly good one. The sound mix created for the film is considerably more active than you'd probably expect it to be for a character driven thriller, with the rears lending all manner of ambient effects and background noise where appropriate. The dialogue generally comes at us from the front of the mix, and this works well as it's never hard to discern. If you have trouble with Australian accents, optional English subtitles and closed captioning options are provided.
Sony has provided a pretty decent array of supplements starting with twenty-five minutes worth of deleted scenes, fourteen scenes in total. Here we see more of Ray and Carla enjoying one another's company, witness more of their grief when things start to quickly go south, and experience more of what Ray's wife would be going through in this situation as well as a few more assorted character development bits. None of this really changes the film much, but it shows how much thought the writers put into the characters.
There are also a few featurettes to be found, the first of which is Inside The Square, a half hour documentary that follows the genesis of the film from pre-production to post-production with a lot of interesting stops along the way. There are some good cast and crew interviews in here and it offers a pretty intimate look into how this picture was put together. Less impressive but still worth watching are two five minute bits that cover Pre-Visualization tactics and Scene Deconstruction, the later showing how computer effects were meshed with the more organic side of filmmaking quite seamlessly.
Rounding out the extras are a music video, a ten minute short film called Spider (directed by Nash Edgerton), a few promo spots for a few unrelated Sony Blu-ray properties, animated menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
The Square is a surprisingly intense film that builds quite cleverly to a fantastically riveting conclusion. Superbly acted and beautifully shot, it's given an appropriately strong Blu-ray debut from Sony who offer up the film in good quality and with some choice supplements as well.