Russell plays Malcolm Anderson, a Miami news reporter who is worn out by his beat, reporting on murder and violence every day. Early on, he is called to the home of the parents of a murder victim, and he watches as his photographer (Joe Pantoliano) listlessly uses one arm to snap a picture of the mother receiving the call from the morgue where the father has conclusively identified the body. Malcolm's girlfriend, Christine (Hemingway), is also prepared to quit her job so the both of them can move away and start somewhere fresh, but Malcolm finds himself suddenly caught up in a media firestorm when he receives a call from the killer himself (Richard Jordan). After proving his identity using details of the crime, Malcolm and the man who comes to be known as the "Numbers Killer" enter an unusual relationship, in which the killer reveals his victims and some of his motivation to Malcolm, and Malcolm publishes them.

The film is based on a story by John Katzenbach, who was an actual reporter for the Miami Herald, and the most potentially potent part of the story is the question of how willing Malcolm ought to be when it comes to talking to the killer. Malcolm's involvement in the story makes him a story himself, one of the few news reporters hounded by news reporters as he enters and exits the newspaper's offices. When the killer calls Malcolm at home and Christine answers, she becomes furious when Malcolm won't hang up. She accuses him of giving him a voice, an echo of a complaint common on 21st century social media whenever an incident such as the one in Charleston or Sandy Hook occurs: all these people want is attention. Give it to the victims, not the killers. Disappointingly, the movie merely approaches Malcolm's complex relationship with the story in the movie as obviously bad, in the sense that the character will come to regret it, but fails to explore the morality of it with any particular nuance.

Beyond that, the whole idea that the film could present a genuine question about where the line is in terms of news reporting being informative vs. exploitative is deflated by the fact that The Mean Season is a thriller at heart, and not a very good one. A film asking real questions wouldn't concoct something as silly as a telephoning serial killer because the artificial nature of it drowns out much in the way of subtlety. Borsos isn't making The Insider, he's making Cape Fear, and he isn't up for the task. Audiences in 1985 may have gone in expecting that kind of movie, but there's no life to the scenes where the killer calls: these moments, above all, feel oddly like rip-offs of late '90s movies copying Lambs and Se7en, despite the film predating them by nearly a decade. Russell is, as always, a reliably charming actor, but the film flattens it out, and he and Jordan can't find the dangerous spark necessary for the movie to work.

Borsos is not a particularly good director. Despite the fact that his film is ostensibly about the difference between a connection with people and a salacious headline, Borsos grabs for the script's most shallow exploitation elements. The movie is plagued by multiple hacky fake-outs that wouldn't have made it into a Friday the 13th sequel, and he does nothing to make the Miami newsroom visually interesting. As the film limps toward a dull-as-dirt face-off between Malcolm and the murderer, with Hemingway predictably drawn into their back-and-forth, The Mean Season commits itself fully to empty spectacle over ideas.

The Blu-ray
The Mean Season arrives on Blu-ray in a boxy Infiniti Blu-ray case, and features cover art half-heartedly derived from the movie's original theatrical poster. The back is Olive's fairly standardized template, with part of the R-rating logo cut off by a distracted designer. Inside the case, there is a postcard that people can mail in if they want to get on Olive's mailing list.

The Video and Audio
Presented in 1.85:1 1080p AVC and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track, Olive's presentation of the film is adequate. The film has a slightly dirty appearance, and colors are on the drab side, but detail is generally decent, and no smoothing has been applied, leaving the movie's grain structure intact. Some print damage is evident throughout, but not intrusive. A crucial dark scene also seems a little impenetrable, but I also imagine that may be by design. Most of the film centers around people talking on the phone, so the stereo track sounds pretty basic. A few more action-oriented scenes are fine, but unremarkable. No subtitles or captions are provided.

The Extras
None.

Conclusion
I hadn't heard of The Mean Season when I plucked it from DVDTalk's screener pool, which struck me as odd because it had Kurt Russell in a leading role. Now that I've seen it, I know why nobody ever brought it up: although there are some potentially interesting ideas in play, The Mean Season never endeavors to be more than a second-rate thriller. Skip it.