American Son Blu-ray delivers great video and solid audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
While home visiting relatives for Thanksgiving, 19-year-old Marine Mike Holland begins an unexpected romance, clashes with family and old friends, and confronts his fears about his imminent deployment to Iraq.
American Son takes a simple dramatic premise -- a young man is being shipped overseas for a combat tour of duty, and he has only hours
home to spend
as he wishes -- and desperately tries to mold it into a deeper, more complex, and inwardly exploratory drama about life, its precious moments, and the
very real sense of frailty and brevity there is to it all. Unfortunately, the picture doesn't always work as nobly intended. Director Neil Abramson's
(Ringmaster)
American Son sometimes succeeds but sometimes struggles to dig all that far below the surface, toying with base emotions but never really
driving to the
heart of its characters or finding a true
sense of worth to the drama that surrounds them. It's all very much a superficial experience, one that aims high and strives for something good but
that
never does find the depth the material commands and the story seems wanting to explore. It's a decent enough movie, though, but one that doesn't
deliver on the sort of emotional needs required to elevate it amongst the finest Human Dramas set against the backdrop of impending wartime
deployment.
Together.
Marine rifleman Mike (Nick Cannon) is set to be deployed to Iraq, but he's granted a 96-hour leave of absence to go home for Thanksgiving before
heading overseas. One the bus trip back, he meets a beautiful young passenger named Cristina (Melonie Diaz) whom he charms, sits beside, and
grows to like quite a bit, and she him. Upon arriving home, he spends some time with his best friend Jake (Matt O'Leary), his mother Donna (April
Grace) and her
husband Dale (Tom Sizemore), and his biological father Eddie (Chi McBride) with whom Mike tries to locate and straighten up his wayward brother.
His
time is mostly occupied by thinking about and spending more and more time with Cristina. He meets her parents and the two grow quite fond of
one another, their hours together yielding a special, quick-growing romance that only the fog of war, the distance of foreign shores, and
dishonesty about a coming deployment could threaten.
American Son is at its best in a short but incredibly effective and moving sequence that captures the essence of the story and the film's
gentle
anti-war, pro-humanity posture. Mike and his girlfriend Cristina visit a neighborhood disabled veteran recently returned from Iraq. He appears
missing a
leg and wearing a shirt that says, "I went to Iraq and all I got was crippled." He efforts to move around as well as he can, to walk alongside Mike as
he cuts
the grass. Though the veteran comes across as largely jovial and full of spirit and life, the undercurrent of the scene is chilling, foreshadowing not
necessarily what may or may not happen to Mike once he deploys but
bringing
home the realities of the war in a very real, tangible, up-front sort of way that epitomizes the film's emotions and emphasizes all of the coming
dramatic currents the more the time ticks away towards Mike's departure. It's the scene's effective balance between subtly foreshadowing the
dangers of
war and bringing the immediacy of the realities of Mike's future to the forefront of the film that makes it work in the broader dramatic context. It's
also
American Son's finest sequence, but even
afterward
there's a
disappointing absence of real, gut-wrenching emotion as the movie seems to maneuver through its paces rather than find a genuine sense of
grief and pending absence at Mike's imminent deployment.
The film proves a little more effective at painting the realities of life and love more so than the effects of war, or coming war, on the human
condition. Mike's developing relationship with Cristina is captured well, smartly developed and thoroughly so even within the constraints of the film's
rather short runtime. It captures a very real essence of how quickly something good may form and how equally fast it may fall apart, not
because of a sudden incompatibility between new lovers but because of the realities of the world, how the pulls of life, past decisions, and decades of
history can come
between even the tightest bonds, the most precious ties, even soul mates. It's the foreknowledge of the pending fracture of the relationship that
hurts the most, not the
realities of war, as well and as simply as those may be captured in the film in the above referenced disabled veteran sequence. Nick Cannon and
Melonie Diaz make a smart, likable, believably in-love
pair, and the doubts around the survivability of their relationship define the film more so than Mike's individual journey. This is a tale more of the
joys of togetherness and the pains of separation. Cannon and Diaz's chemistry together goes a long way in shaping the movie's core value system
and plot line, their genuine relationship both the spark that lights the movie and the inevitable fizzle that dramatically darkens it.
American Son easily ranks amongst the very best video presentations released to Blu-ray under the Echo Bridge label. It's also one of the
most
recently made movies to fall to the studio under the Miramax banner. This 1.78:1 high definition presentation looks fantastic, generally. There's a
handsome film-like texture to the image, with light, consistent grain hovering above and helping to accentuate the pure, accurate details below. The
image is quite crisp and nicely defined, with only a hint of nearly missable softness to several scenes. Textures find a very nice, natural appearance and
definition, from faces to clothes and all of the various backgrounds throughout the film. Colors are a little dull, but by filmmaker design. The palette is
steady and even under the film's parameters. Black levels rarely cause any problem, and flesh tones are fine if not slightly pale in only a few shots.
There are no major flaws or unwanted digital tweaks to be found. This is an enjoyable and rock-solid presentation from Echo Bridge that stands up
against the many of the finer transfers from bigger studios.
American Son's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack isn't quite on the same level of excellence as the video transfer, but it's a good
complimentary piece. There's a generally pure presence to music, with smooth delivery, even spacing, and gentle surround immersion. There's a
satisfyingly sloppy low end pulse to in-car, bass-heavy music in one early scene, and some deeper, more naturally aggressive low end activity at a party
sequence in chapter seven. Light ambient effects aren't so constant as to immerse the audience into various scenes, however. Most of the action is of
the front-and-center variety, but it picks up nearly all of the important elements easily enough. Some gunplay later in the film lacks the aggressive
punch and natural presence of the various weapons fired, but the basic sonic signatures prove satisfactory. Dialogue is usually even and plays back at
the right levels, but it does come across as unnaturally quiet and a bit shallow in a jovial chapter two chit-chat sequence between several characters.
Overall, this is a quality sound presentation from Echo Bridge.
American Son contains an audio commentary, a featurette, and two deleted scenes.
Audio Commentary: Director Neil Abramson and Producers Danielle Renfrew and Michael Roiff shape a pretty typical commentary,
discussing all of the basic filmmaking material. They cover the film's story and plot, its emotions, the score, differences from early ideas to the end
product, shooting locations, some of the technical challenges of the location filming, cast and performances, and more.
Behind the Scenes (HD, 11:38): Raw footage from the 20-day shoot.
Deleted Scenes: Beach Talk (HD, 2:16) and Be Safe (HD, 1:16).
American Son never quite finds its full stride, failing to capture the very real, very deep, very heartbreaking emotions the story aims to engender
in its audience. But it's not a total failure by any stretch of the imagination. It does capture some sound emotional content in both the sequence
featuring the disabled veteran and in
the sudden but deep and believable relationship formed between Mike and Cristina. Nevertheless, there's a vacuum in the film, a sense of absent
dramatic supremacy. Audiences care about the characters, but not like they were family. Audiences are concerned for Mike's safety, his love life, and
the lives of
those closest to him, but not with any real, deeply held emotions that will linger long after the lights come up. It's a solid but incomplete movie, one
with a strong working foundation that's of high
enough quality to make it worth a watch. Echo Bridge's Blu-ray release of American Son features crisp, high end video and solid audio. A few
supplements are included. Recommended.
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