Battlefield America Blu-ray delivers great video and audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
A young businessman who lands a community service sentence falls in with a group of misfit kids who need mentoring. With the help of a pro instructor, he works to get the kids ready for a big underground dance competition.
If you believe the trailers, the Blu-ray packaging and the marketing campaign, Battlefield
America is another urban dance movie from the makers of You Got Served. In fact, Battlefield's
dancing is just the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. The film is an after-school
special aimed squarely at the family market, as if its makers were doing the same type of
community service that the film's protagonist is forced to undergo. Everything in it has been
tailored for the kid audience. The depiction of impoverished city life is sanitized, with no
weapons and hardly any drugs in sight; with minor exceptions, the language is tame enough for
broadcast TV; the two romantic relationships never progress beyond a kiss; and the tough-talking
tots all turn out to be great kids trying desperately to cover bruised feelings, while yearning for a
kindly adult to notice their pain and provide a healing touch. A more family-friendly pop
confection could not have been better prepared if you'd ordered it straight from the kitchens of
Disney.
Hip-hop impressario Chris Stokes directed and co-wrote the script with star Marques Houston,
one of the leads from You Got Served. A clever running in-joke of Battlefield America is that
Houston's hard-driving overachiever keeps protesting that he can't dance, whereas any viewer of
You Got Served knows that Houston is an energetic and agile dancer who has to restrain his skill
for the sake of his Battlefield character. It's the youngsters who get to show off, plus their two
adult teachers. Houston isn't alone in having to hold himself back. Actress Lynn Whitfield
signed on with Stokes as co-producer of the project. Once upon a time, she mastered tricky
moves to portray the legendary Josephine
Baker, but here she plays a cynical bureaucrat whose
icy demeanor gradually melts as she watches Houston's character grow as a person and the kids he's
mentoring blossom under his influence.
Two forces are about to collide. No, I'm not talking about a dance competition, although there is
a deadly rivalry here between two teams, one currently leaderless and uncoordinated (and, in the
film's subtext of racial politics, entirely made up of minorities), the other led by a bully of a
trash-talking coach who calls himself "The Shockwave" (Christopher Michael Jones) and highly
trained (and also white, despite their faux ghetto style). The collision in question is between a
gang of resentful misfits that hangs out at the Pacific Park Community Center in Long Beach,
California, and a competitive ad man from L.A. named Sean Lewis (Houston) who hates kids
and doesn't have time for anything that doesn't advance his career. Sentenced to 120 hours of
community service on a DUI, Lewis is assigned to work at the community center, and he lasts
less than a day picking up trash. The center's director, Sarah Miller (Mekia Cox, who cut Steve
Carell's hair in Crazy Stupid Love),
tells him to try working with the kids—or else.
The rivalry between the group that christens itself the Bad Boys and their mean-spirited
opponents at the citywide competition known as "Battlefield America" provides a narrative
framework, but the film's real story is the relationship between Sean Lewis and the kids. He
needs to get over himself, and they need a father figure they can trust. With numerous missteps
and detours, the film proceeds from their first encounter, where the kids literally kick Sean to the
ground, to the group hug that concludes the Battlefield America competition. (I'll let you guess
whether or not they win.)
Along the way, Sean does develop a fatherly relationship with the group's leader, Eric (Tristen
M. Carter), whose real father (Gary Anthony Sturgis) abandoned him before he was born but
suddenly reappears during a family crisis, allowing the film to take on directly all the core issues
of paternal responsibility. In an additional example of overly neat plotting, Sarah, for whom Sean
falls hard, has a niece staying with her, Chantal (Chandler Kinney), for whom Eric falls hard. The
romances go just far enough to be sweet but not so far that the target demographic is likely to cry,
"Ooohh, gross!"
An entertainingly offbeat presence is Russell Ferguson, formerly a finalist on So You Think You
Can Dance. He plays Prime, a dancer and choreographer who is hired by Sean to give the kids
professional training and ends up dancing with them in a "sudden death" match at the grand
contest. A vinegary touch is added by Ms. Williams (Valerie Pettiford), mother of one of the
most talented Bad Boys, Jeremiah (Neiko Keiyan), who does not want her son involved in any
such distraction from schoolwork. The inner logic of such wish fulfillment stories dictates that
Ms. Williams end up in the audience watching Jeremiah perform, astonished by her son's talent
and cheering at the top of her lungs.
Presiding over the entire affair is Lynn Whitfield's Ms. Parker, the tough but ultimately tender-hearted probation officer monitoring Sean's completion
of his community service. She doesn't
think he'll make it to the end, but she's delighted when he does. Whitfield is far too pretty for a
civil servant, as is Mekia Cox for a community center administrator, but this is L.A., where
dreams come true and even the thorniest of problems can be resolved by the end of the third act.
Battlefield America was shot with Red digital cameras by Miko Dannels, who only recently
graduated to cinematographer after working up from the ranks as grip, gaffer and chief lighting
technician. The results, after the usual extensive color grading in post-production, reflect the
typical virtues of digital capture in the lack of noise and the sharpness of the image. ARC
Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray offers a consistently pleasing, colorful display that
doesn't suffer from the aggressive "edginess" that sometimes afflicts digitally originated
productions. The dance competitions are the obvious showcase, because they present the most
elaborate imagery with the widest array of intense colors. However, the quieter hues of the
community center and of Sean's office are equally well represented. So is the client function to
which Sean invites Sarah, where the formal attire of numerous guests shows off the transfer's
deep blacks. Sean and the Bad Boys arrive for their final show in similarly formal attire, which
makes them look a little like the Men in Black. Motion artifacts and other issues that sometimes
result from a detour through the analog realm were not in evidence, nor did I observe any
compression-related problems.
Note: The disc jacket lists the film's running time as "145 minutes", which is a misprint. The
actual running time is 1:45, which translates to 105 minutes. Whoever prepared the jacket copy
failed to perform the conversion.
The film's DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack aims for impact, not realism. During the dance
competitions, the roar of the crowd is mixed louder than the music itself, and it fills the surround
array so that music becomes a throbbing presence beneath the crowd. At key moments in an
especially powerful performance, the dancers literally shake the ground (the camera moves, as if
being vibrated), and a deep tone registers the shock, momentarily overpowering both the music
and the crowd. It's hokey, but it's an effective way to reproduce the dancers' sense of "owning"
the floor.
Even in the non-dancing scenes, which are far more numerous, the soundtrack doesn't aim to
reproduce a realistic environment. The dialogue in these scenes is either comedic or functional
(or both), and the track conveys it clearly, often supporting it with songs or underscore (by
Michael J. Leslie), which may be routed to the surrounds for effect. In short, the film's track
takes full advantage of the 5.1 format, but not in the usual way.
Featurettes (HD, 1080p; 2.35:1): These carry "green band" intros like trailers, but
they're created like behind-the-scenes EPKs. However, as with trailers, much of the same
interview footage is reused in each featurette.
#1 (3:31)
#2 (5:05)
#3 (6:12)
#4 (3:09)
Music Videos (HD, 1080p; 2.35:1)
"Make Believe" by Tracy Irve (3:12)
"Blinded" by Japollonia (3:54)
Additional Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers (in 1080p) for We the Party and
Red Dog. These can be skipped with the chapter forward
button and are not otherwise
available once the disc loads.
When Battlefield America was briefly in theaters in June 2012, the few critics who reviewed it
were unfavorable, leaving the film with a 9% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
"Generic", "awkward"
and "earnest" were among the adjectives. I could have easily written the same review, except that
it was obvious to me that I'm not the target audience. This is a kids' film through and through,
and I wouldn't expect adults to enjoy it any more than I'd expect kids to stay awake through
some grown-up psychological thriller. The marketing couldn't have been clearer ("Where Kids
Rule!"), and the film's resolution in which (spoiler alert!) everyone lives happily ever after is
tailor-made for the fairy tale crowd. Recommended for family viewing, but rent if you're not
sure.
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