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Waist Deep (HD DVD)
Universal // R // October 10, 2006 // Region 0
List Price: $39.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
I'd never heard of Waist Deep until 
this HD DVD was announced, and that probably should've been Subtle Hint #1 that I'm not exactly the movie's target demographic. But still, blaxploitation for the new millenium from the director who brought you Mariah Carey's Glitter...? How could I pass that up? Beats me, but I'm kinda wishing I had.
Tyrese Gibson (2 Fast 2 Furious) stars as Oxygen, and he landed that nickname 'cause when he was growing up on the streets and the cops showed up, he'd disappear like...oxygen, I guess. So, Otis -- O2 to his friends -- is just a few months out of the slammer and is trying to turn his life around when...oops. Carjacked with his son still snoozing in the backseat. Big Meat (The Game), the one-and-a-half-eyed partner-in-crime he screwed over, is holding Junior ransom for a hundred large, and O2 and the foxy suit-shilling hooker who set him up (Meagan Good) knock over gang-owned rackets and plunder the bad guys' safety deposit
boxes to try to cough up enough loot before the deadline.
I kinda dug Tyrese in 2 Fast 2 Furious because he knew he was in a shitty flick and hammed it up. Waist Deep takes itself way too seriously even though it has a scene with a near-cycloptic rapper cutting off a guy's hand with a machete and then smacking him with it. Tyrese scowls his way through the entire movie even before his Jake-Lloyd-with-cornrows kid gets snatched and doesn't really seem all that broken up about the kidnapping aside from some token "WAAAAAAAALT! Walt! Hang on...I'm coming, Walt! My son! They took my son, man! WAAAAAAAALT!" (*)-grade dialogue. The angle of pretending that rival gangs are attacking each other never amounts to anything, but then again, this is a movie with a lead character who hides from the police by standing in front of an enormous window. Waist Deep is a vapid paint-by-numbers action flick complete with a dumb-ass romance, an ending that drags on fifteen or twenty minutes longer than it really should have, and a hysterical epilogue on a Mexican beach that's predictable in every conceivable way other than Shitty Kid Actor shouting "Padre!" out of the blue. Oh well. At least Vondie Curtis-Hall has the whole acting thing to fall back on.
Video: The last film that director Vondie Curtis-Hall helmed may have been a glossy, overproduced, feature-length music video, but the 2.39:1 photography in Waist Deep opts for a grittier, edgier look. It's an aesthetic that fits the movie, but the flattened contrast and dingy palette don't make for a particularly impressive high-def presentation. I'm not going to criticize Waist Deep based on the film's intended look, but this HD DVD is admittedly the least eye-catching of the day-and-date titles released on the format so far. Still, it's a noticeable step up from the DVD version on the flipside of this disc, and there isn't any artifacting or speckling to mar the image.
Audio: You could probably write the
first sentence or two reviewing this Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 track without ever having watched the movie: gunshots and the requisite hip-hop-heavy soundtrack are bolstered by a heavy kick from the subwoofer, and the action sequences make frequent and effective use of the surround channels as sounds smoothly pan from speaker to speaker. Same goes for pretty much every urban action-slash-drama. It's just kind of an ordinary mix, though; the audio isn't particularly aggressive or bombastic, the lower frequencies are hefty but don't rattle everything in the room, and the sound design is awfully subdued outside of shootouts and high-speed chases.
There aren't any dubs on this HD DVD although subtitles are offered in the three usual languages.
Supplements: A couple of extras are crammed onto the DVD side of this combo disc, including a pair of anamorphic widescreen featurettes. "Analysis of a Scene" spends five minutes...y'know, analyzing a scene as director Vondie Curtis-Hall, cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, and star Tyrese Gibson run through how the elaborate carjacking sequence was staged and shot. The three of them also comment on matching the characters with their rides and show off the Go Mobile rig they used to shoot the car chases in the eight minute featurette "Drive By Filmmaking". Ten minutes of additional footage extend a few scenes and introduce a subplot about the cops chasing after '06 Bonnie & Clyde. There are also a couple of outtake reels of O2 trippin' at that "Eminem-lookin' ass nigga" at the gas station and Coco bitching out the manager at the bank. Yeah, there's the obligatory music video too: Black Buddafly's "Bad Girl".
Conclusion: No. Actually, its $39.98 MSRP makes Waist Deep a "hell no".
* All due credit to TeeVeePedia for that shamelessly-lifted Lost reference.
this HD DVD was announced, and that probably should've been Subtle Hint #1 that I'm not exactly the movie's target demographic. But still, blaxploitation for the new millenium from the director who brought you Mariah Carey's Glitter...? How could I pass that up? Beats me, but I'm kinda wishing I had. Tyrese Gibson (2 Fast 2 Furious) stars as Oxygen, and he landed that nickname 'cause when he was growing up on the streets and the cops showed up, he'd disappear like...oxygen, I guess. So, Otis -- O2 to his friends -- is just a few months out of the slammer and is trying to turn his life around when...oops. Carjacked with his son still snoozing in the backseat. Big Meat (The Game), the one-and-a-half-eyed partner-in-crime he screwed over, is holding Junior ransom for a hundred large, and O2 and the foxy suit-shilling hooker who set him up (Meagan Good) knock over gang-owned rackets and plunder the bad guys' safety deposit
boxes to try to cough up enough loot before the deadline. I kinda dug Tyrese in 2 Fast 2 Furious because he knew he was in a shitty flick and hammed it up. Waist Deep takes itself way too seriously even though it has a scene with a near-cycloptic rapper cutting off a guy's hand with a machete and then smacking him with it. Tyrese scowls his way through the entire movie even before his Jake-Lloyd-with-cornrows kid gets snatched and doesn't really seem all that broken up about the kidnapping aside from some token "WAAAAAAAALT! Walt! Hang on...I'm coming, Walt! My son! They took my son, man! WAAAAAAAALT!" (*)-grade dialogue. The angle of pretending that rival gangs are attacking each other never amounts to anything, but then again, this is a movie with a lead character who hides from the police by standing in front of an enormous window. Waist Deep is a vapid paint-by-numbers action flick complete with a dumb-ass romance, an ending that drags on fifteen or twenty minutes longer than it really should have, and a hysterical epilogue on a Mexican beach that's predictable in every conceivable way other than Shitty Kid Actor shouting "Padre!" out of the blue. Oh well. At least Vondie Curtis-Hall has the whole acting thing to fall back on.
Video: The last film that director Vondie Curtis-Hall helmed may have been a glossy, overproduced, feature-length music video, but the 2.39:1 photography in Waist Deep opts for a grittier, edgier look. It's an aesthetic that fits the movie, but the flattened contrast and dingy palette don't make for a particularly impressive high-def presentation. I'm not going to criticize Waist Deep based on the film's intended look, but this HD DVD is admittedly the least eye-catching of the day-and-date titles released on the format so far. Still, it's a noticeable step up from the DVD version on the flipside of this disc, and there isn't any artifacting or speckling to mar the image.
Audio: You could probably write the
first sentence or two reviewing this Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 track without ever having watched the movie: gunshots and the requisite hip-hop-heavy soundtrack are bolstered by a heavy kick from the subwoofer, and the action sequences make frequent and effective use of the surround channels as sounds smoothly pan from speaker to speaker. Same goes for pretty much every urban action-slash-drama. It's just kind of an ordinary mix, though; the audio isn't particularly aggressive or bombastic, the lower frequencies are hefty but don't rattle everything in the room, and the sound design is awfully subdued outside of shootouts and high-speed chases. There aren't any dubs on this HD DVD although subtitles are offered in the three usual languages.
Supplements: A couple of extras are crammed onto the DVD side of this combo disc, including a pair of anamorphic widescreen featurettes. "Analysis of a Scene" spends five minutes...y'know, analyzing a scene as director Vondie Curtis-Hall, cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, and star Tyrese Gibson run through how the elaborate carjacking sequence was staged and shot. The three of them also comment on matching the characters with their rides and show off the Go Mobile rig they used to shoot the car chases in the eight minute featurette "Drive By Filmmaking". Ten minutes of additional footage extend a few scenes and introduce a subplot about the cops chasing after '06 Bonnie & Clyde. There are also a couple of outtake reels of O2 trippin' at that "Eminem-lookin' ass nigga" at the gas station and Coco bitching out the manager at the bank. Yeah, there's the obligatory music video too: Black Buddafly's "Bad Girl".
Conclusion: No. Actually, its $39.98 MSRP makes Waist Deep a "hell no".
* All due credit to TeeVeePedia for that shamelessly-lifted Lost reference.
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