Franklyn Blu-ray Review

• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
  
• Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
• Resolution: 1080p/24
• Audio Codec: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/16-bit)
  
• Region: A
• Rating: R
  
• Discs: 1
• Studio: Image Entertainment
  
• Blu-ray Disc Release Date: November 17, 20o9
• List Price: $35.98

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BestBuy.com:


Purchase Franklyn on Blu-ray at CD Universe

Download:

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Overall

The Film

Video Quality

Audio Quality

Supplemental Materials



Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures
 More Screen Captures (25 Total)
(Screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG and thus are meant as a general representation of the content and do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)
The Film

British writer/director Gerald McMorrow makes his debut feature film with this ambitiously enigmatic film collage that weaves together four separate storylines and a few different genres as well. Borrowing only superficially from so many of the Hollywood films that arose in the wake of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia and the multiple-Oscar winning Crash that tried so hard to imitate only to fail miserably, McMorrow’s film is actually a rejection of Hollywood storytelling and expectations in its entirety.
Two parallel worlds intertwine, as in modern-day London depressed video artist Emilia (Eva Green) has taken to video taping her suicide attempts, the lovelorn Milo (Sam Riley) is left at the alter and begins yearning for his long lost childhood sweetheart, and Peter (Richard Coyle) is searching for his missing son. Interspersed between all of those plots is another story taking place in a futuristic, dystopian, gothic world, called Meanwhile City as a masked vigilante, looking suspiciously like Rorschach from Watchmen, is tracking a man named The Individual so he can avenge the death of a young girl.
McMorrow’s film is visually stunning and he mixes romance, sci-fi, and a mystery thriller together into one film. It is surely inventive, to say the least, and he is to be commended for avoiding the standard Hollywood methods of storytelling. Unfortunately, Franklyn is far too slow to reveal itself and, in all honesty, very confusing. It loses itself too easily in self-indulgence and the entire Meanwhile City portion of the film is a bit on the nose. Still, it is certainly evidence of McMorrow’s talent and if he should continue pushing the bounds of his art, it may eventually all come together; it just hasn’t quite done that yet in Franklyn.
Video Quality

The 2.35:1 AVC/MPEG-4 high definition 1080p/24 transfer of Franklyn from Image Entertainment captures the alternating palettes of the film rather well. The dark and gritty gothic world of Meanwhile City, the bright sunny over-saturated world of contemporary London with its vibrant reds and the world of Emilia’s flat, which lands somewhere betwixt the two are rendered with a strong amount of detail and texture. Grain is preserved in the 35mm source, but it does sometimes jump a tad and begin to look a little noisy. Blacks are deep and shadow detail is strong with hardly any crush, whilst contrast is set at a good level that doesn’t clip. There is no evidence of compression artifacts or post-processing issues.
Audio Quality

To go along with its capricious colour palette, alternately lugubrious and hyper-realistically saturated, Franklyn has an equally atmospheric soundtrack provided on this release in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/16-bit). The surrounds are used well for oodles of ambience as well as discrete sound effects. Check out the scene in Chapter 6 as Jonathan Preest walks in a circular pattern around a room, variously in and out of frame, as his dialogue is panned around the room to follow him.  Low frequency is not quite fully extended in the mix, so there isn’t very much resonating low bass to work out the subwoofer, but high frequencies are smooth and relaxed and dialogue is clean.
Supplemental Materials

The supplements offered on Franklyn feel a bit too promotional and repetitive, apart from the brief selection of deleted scenes that don’t really add much to the story.  There are a series of interviews with the cast and crew, but snippets of them are used in the short behind-the-scenes featurette as well.
The supplements provided on this release are:

Featurette (1.78:1; 480i/60; 0:04.01) — Promotional in feel, this brief featurette finds the actors and filmmakers discussing the themes and premise of Franklyn.
Interviews:

Gerald McMorrow — Director (1.78:1; 480i/60; 0:10.48)
Jeremy Thomas — Producer (1.78:1; 480i/60; 0:02.10)
Ryan Phillippe — Jonathan Preest (1.78:1; 480i/60; 0:03.04)
Eva Green — Emilia Bryant (1.78:1; 480i/60; 0:03.40)
Sam Riley — Milo (1.78:1; 480i/60; 0:02.12)
Bernard Hill — Esser (1.78:1; 480i/60; 0:01.18)
Léonie Hartard — Costume Designer (1.78:1; 480i/60; 0:03.20)
Laurence Dorman — Production Designer (1.78:1; 480i/60; 0:03.26)
Ben Davis — Director of Photography (1.78:1; 480i/60; 0:02.21)


Deleted Scenes (2.35:1; 480i/60):

Scene 51 “Emilia and the Medic”
Scene 65 “The Bearded Suits”
Scene 81 “Milo and the Library”


Trailer (2.35:1; 480i/60)

The Definitive Word

Overall:


Franklyn is a visual and stylistic triumph and it is certainly refreshing to see a film so happy to celebrate being completely incongruous with normal Hollywood big budget affairs. However, it doesn’t quite deliver fully on its promise. Storylines are far too confusing, at times a little silly, and definitely self-indulgent. Gerald McMorrow should still be applauded for the effort, however, and this Blu-ray release is definitely a solid one from Image Entertainment.


BestBuy.com:


Purchase Franklyn on Blu-ray at CD Universe

Download:

Shop With Us for More Blu-ray Titles at Amazon.com


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