- Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Audio Codec: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
- Resolution: 1080p/24 (23.976Hz)
- Subtitles: N/A
- Region: B (A? C?)
- Certification: 15
- Discs: 1 (1 x Blu-ray)
- Studio: Metrodome Group
- Run Time: 78 Mins.
- Blu-ray Release Date: January 2, 2012
- RRP: £15.99
[amazon-product region=”uk” tracking_id=”bluraydefinit-21″]B0063G29Q8[/amazon-product]
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.co.uk
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Overall
[Rating:2.5/5]
The Film
[Rating:1/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0/5]
Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures
(Screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG thus are meant as a general representation of the content and do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)
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The Film
[Rating:1/5]
Let me just come right out and say it: this movie is bad, very bad. The fact that its plot has been used to death in thrillers many times before is one thing, but then it is so poorly scripted that the “mystery” of who the killer is really pretty obvious about halfway through the film, making it a worthless endeavor.
Milla Jovovich plays the elementary schoolteacher Anna Marchant who witnesses the serial killer known as “Tearjerk Jack” murdering one of his victims as she is walking home alone from a girls’ night out with her friends. When Jack goes after her, obviously to kill her since she’s seen his face, she falls off a bridge into the waiting water below striking her head. Days later she awakes in the hospital, alive and perfectly healthy, except for one thing – she can’t recognize faces anymore. Anna is suffering from the rare disorder knows as “face blindness.” Every person she sees looks unfamiliar to her whenever she loses sight of them. Everyone is now unfamiliar to her, including her live-in boyfriend Bryce (Michael Shanks) and her two best friends. The only face she can seem to retain is the detective working on her case, Sam Kerrest (Julian McMahon). Cue the inevitable love seen between Kerrest and Anna as they “get away” to safety with the killer still on the loose. But Tearjerk Jack knows about Anna’s affliction and is determined to use it against her to get close to her and finish what he couldn’t do the first time around.
Look, we’ve seen these thrillers before with the disabled eyewitness who couldn’t point out the killer and the cop who falls in love with her, just look up Jennifer Eight. Just because they bring in a revolving cast of actors to play the “faces” that Anna sees in this film doesn’t make it groundbreaking in the slightest. The writing in Faces in the Crowd is amateurish at best, although I must admit the film itself looks very beautiful, but hardly unique for its genre.
Video Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Faces in the Crowd does not have the strongest transfer to Blu-ray I have seen recently. The film itself has a nice palette with subtle shadings, glowing ambers, shadows, and so forth that can really take advantage of a strong high definition transfer, but perhaps the mid-bitrate AVC/MPEG-4 encodement on a BD-25 disc hampers the resolution, because there is visible color banding and black levels are not very inky at all, looking more greyish.
Audio Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
The sole option is an English DTS-HD 5.1 mix that is competent at best, but tends to be a bit distracting in that it is subtle most of the time then prone to sudden outbursts of sound and discrete effects in the surround channels with sudden boominess as well. Otherwise, dialogue is clear and highs are natural.
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0/5]
Zip. Zilch. Nada, Naught. Nothing here to see or hear, so move along.
The Definitive Word
Overall:
[Rating:2.5/5]
A middling Blu-ray transfer and laughably bad thriller add up to a movie that needs to be left on a shelf somewhere to collect dust or you rent it on a painfully slow day and have a good laugh.
Additional Screen Captures
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[amazon-product region=”uk” tracking_id=”bluraydefinit-21″]B0063G29Q8[/amazon-product]
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.co.uk
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:2.5/5]
The Film
[Rating:1/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:3.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0/5]
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