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Watcher, The (HD DVD)
Universal // R // June 26, 2007 // Region 0
List Price: $29.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"Police Detective Hollis Mackie, informing us that this horrible game of cat and mouse will continue today."
- Some random news reporter signing off in The Watcher
"Horrible game of cat and mouse": yup, that about sums up The Watcher, a tepid Se7en knockoff that opens with choppy footage of Keanu Reeves doing some sort of chop-socky dance to Rob Zombie's "Dragula" and doesn't get any better from there.
David Allen Griffin (Keanu Reeves) used to stalk and slash nubile twentysomethings in Los Angeles, tormenting the suit heading up the investigation by butchering his lover. Devastated, Joel Campbell (James Spader) fled the city to set up shop in Chicago where he gobbles down fistfuls of prescription drugs, keeping
himself zonked out enough to avoid accidentally doing anything more than cash his disability checks and drop in on his therapist (an increasingly middle-aged Marisa Tomei). Griffin tried to keep his killing spree churning along in L.A., but Campbell's replacement wasn't any fun, so he's also headed out to the Midwest. Griffin has livened up the game, too, mailing the burnt-out fed photos of his victims a day before they're to be murdered.
So, yeah. We have the burnt-out loner cop stereotype, an elusive nutjob with a stupid gimmick, and a cute-enough love interest to wind up gagged and bound for the final showdown. You can fill in the blanks from there: a handful of mostly bloodless, off-screen kills, the obligatory car chase, a few near-misses where the cops show up just a couple minutes too late, a routine bit where one of Griffin's victims is hiding in an abandoned warehouse and the killer starts flipping hatches or something over one by one...you know how this song goes. The Watcher tries to throw in some kind of moral message about how detached and impersonal our society has become, along with a psychological angle so clunky that I half-expected to see Donald Kaufman's name on the script, but it doesn't matter. The Watcher doesn't do anything to distinguish itself from the glut of other generic thrillers that were littering theaters in the late nineties-slash-early aughts. It's a USA Original Movie that inexplicably wound up splashed across a couple thousand screens.
In his first and last time directing a feature film, Joe Charbanic leans heavily on all sorts of dated visual gimmicks, from black-and-white negative shots to choppy, blurry flashbacks and chases. Y'know, because nothing ratchets up the intensity of a chase through the streets of Chicago like
motion trails and gutting the framerate in half. A lifeless burn-out doesn't exactly make for much of a compelling lead, and Marisa Tomei's therapist is more of a plot device than an actual character. Keanu Reeves has it the worst, though, from his wooden, labored line readings to his inability to exude anything resembling menace. I'm sure his name looked nice on the marquee so soon after The Matrix's enormous box office success, but he's hopelessly miscast as a serial killer, and his anemic attempts at being charmingly disturbing -- 'dancing' with a gagged victim he's strapped to a chair, for instance -- just seem ridiculous. Shooting on location in Chicago adds some production value to the film, but the digital effects haven't aged well, particularly the hysterical Lifetime TV movie-grade fireworks that round out the climax.
The Watcher is the type of forgettable, paint-by-numbers thriller that used to show up on the local UPN affiliate after the infomercials wrapped up on Sunday afternoon. The Watcher wasn't worth a look then, and it sure as hell isn't worth shelling out twenty or thirty bucks to buy on this shovelware HD DVD.
Video: The 1.85:1
high definition master of The Watcher that Universal dusted off for this HD DVD was almost certainly minted back when the film was first released on home video. The image is lightly speckled and has a faintly grainy texture to it, and definition and clarity tend to be rather poor. I don't have the original DVD in front of me to compare, but this high definition release of The Watcher is somewhat soft and is so lacking in fine object detail that it's at best a modest upgrade over a well-mastered DVD. The Watcher looks marginally okay on HD DVD -- it's not disappointing but doesn't have a single shot that manages to impress -- but I'd be willing to bet that it'd benefit from a new transfer instead of recycling one from six or seven years ago.
Because of the fairly short length of the film and the lack of extras, The Watcher is presented on a single layered disc rather than the standard HD-30.
Audio: The Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio is every bit as bland. The film's dialogue sounds slightly muffled and sometimes gets buried in the mix, particularly when the subwoofer kicks in. There's a fair amount of activity in the lower frequencies, but the bass tends to come across as boomy rather than tight and thunderous. The surround channels get a decent workout, although there isn't a scene in the movie that really stands out sonically. Serviceable but forgettable.
A six-channel French dub has also been tacked on along with subtitles in English and French.
Extras: Nothing. Not even a trailer.
Conclusion: Every time I tear the shrinkwrap off an HD DVD like The Watcher, I get the sense that Universal isn't trying to offer their films in the highest quality possible to the couple hundred thousand cineastes who've invested in the fledgling format so much as just trying to fill a quota. The Watcher is another uninspired catalog title getting an uninspired release on HD DVD. I know Universal can do better with their exceptional back catalog than this, and I really wish they would. Skip It.
Standard image disclaimer: the pictures scattered around this review were lifted from AllMoviePhoto.com and don't necessarily reflect the appearance of this HD DVD.
- Some random news reporter signing off in The Watcher
"Horrible game of cat and mouse": yup, that about sums up The Watcher, a tepid Se7en knockoff that opens with choppy footage of Keanu Reeves doing some sort of chop-socky dance to Rob Zombie's "Dragula" and doesn't get any better from there.
David Allen Griffin (Keanu Reeves) used to stalk and slash nubile twentysomethings in Los Angeles, tormenting the suit heading up the investigation by butchering his lover. Devastated, Joel Campbell (James Spader) fled the city to set up shop in Chicago where he gobbles down fistfuls of prescription drugs, keeping
himself zonked out enough to avoid accidentally doing anything more than cash his disability checks and drop in on his therapist (an increasingly middle-aged Marisa Tomei). Griffin tried to keep his killing spree churning along in L.A., but Campbell's replacement wasn't any fun, so he's also headed out to the Midwest. Griffin has livened up the game, too, mailing the burnt-out fed photos of his victims a day before they're to be murdered. So, yeah. We have the burnt-out loner cop stereotype, an elusive nutjob with a stupid gimmick, and a cute-enough love interest to wind up gagged and bound for the final showdown. You can fill in the blanks from there: a handful of mostly bloodless, off-screen kills, the obligatory car chase, a few near-misses where the cops show up just a couple minutes too late, a routine bit where one of Griffin's victims is hiding in an abandoned warehouse and the killer starts flipping hatches or something over one by one...you know how this song goes. The Watcher tries to throw in some kind of moral message about how detached and impersonal our society has become, along with a psychological angle so clunky that I half-expected to see Donald Kaufman's name on the script, but it doesn't matter. The Watcher doesn't do anything to distinguish itself from the glut of other generic thrillers that were littering theaters in the late nineties-slash-early aughts. It's a USA Original Movie that inexplicably wound up splashed across a couple thousand screens.
In his first and last time directing a feature film, Joe Charbanic leans heavily on all sorts of dated visual gimmicks, from black-and-white negative shots to choppy, blurry flashbacks and chases. Y'know, because nothing ratchets up the intensity of a chase through the streets of Chicago like
motion trails and gutting the framerate in half. A lifeless burn-out doesn't exactly make for much of a compelling lead, and Marisa Tomei's therapist is more of a plot device than an actual character. Keanu Reeves has it the worst, though, from his wooden, labored line readings to his inability to exude anything resembling menace. I'm sure his name looked nice on the marquee so soon after The Matrix's enormous box office success, but he's hopelessly miscast as a serial killer, and his anemic attempts at being charmingly disturbing -- 'dancing' with a gagged victim he's strapped to a chair, for instance -- just seem ridiculous. Shooting on location in Chicago adds some production value to the film, but the digital effects haven't aged well, particularly the hysterical Lifetime TV movie-grade fireworks that round out the climax. The Watcher is the type of forgettable, paint-by-numbers thriller that used to show up on the local UPN affiliate after the infomercials wrapped up on Sunday afternoon. The Watcher wasn't worth a look then, and it sure as hell isn't worth shelling out twenty or thirty bucks to buy on this shovelware HD DVD.
Video: The 1.85:1
high definition master of The Watcher that Universal dusted off for this HD DVD was almost certainly minted back when the film was first released on home video. The image is lightly speckled and has a faintly grainy texture to it, and definition and clarity tend to be rather poor. I don't have the original DVD in front of me to compare, but this high definition release of The Watcher is somewhat soft and is so lacking in fine object detail that it's at best a modest upgrade over a well-mastered DVD. The Watcher looks marginally okay on HD DVD -- it's not disappointing but doesn't have a single shot that manages to impress -- but I'd be willing to bet that it'd benefit from a new transfer instead of recycling one from six or seven years ago. Because of the fairly short length of the film and the lack of extras, The Watcher is presented on a single layered disc rather than the standard HD-30.
Audio: The Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio is every bit as bland. The film's dialogue sounds slightly muffled and sometimes gets buried in the mix, particularly when the subwoofer kicks in. There's a fair amount of activity in the lower frequencies, but the bass tends to come across as boomy rather than tight and thunderous. The surround channels get a decent workout, although there isn't a scene in the movie that really stands out sonically. Serviceable but forgettable.
A six-channel French dub has also been tacked on along with subtitles in English and French.
Extras: Nothing. Not even a trailer.
Conclusion: Every time I tear the shrinkwrap off an HD DVD like The Watcher, I get the sense that Universal isn't trying to offer their films in the highest quality possible to the couple hundred thousand cineastes who've invested in the fledgling format so much as just trying to fill a quota. The Watcher is another uninspired catalog title getting an uninspired release on HD DVD. I know Universal can do better with their exceptional back catalog than this, and I really wish they would. Skip It.
Standard image disclaimer: the pictures scattered around this review were lifted from AllMoviePhoto.com and don't necessarily reflect the appearance of this HD DVD.
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