River Runs Red - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

River Runs Red

Movie:
4K Video:
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Final Score: ​

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Movie
It’s a sad state of affairs in today’s society, but we seem to becoming more and more balkanized over social issues. It’s an “us vs. them” mentality that has been put in the highlight of the media, and whether this is a large percentage of society or not, it’s in the forefronts of many peoples minds as a result. Black Lives Matter, minorities being shot by officers for any reason, left political ideology vs. right, “literally Hitler” or “Lock her up!”, the list goes on and on. I wasn’t expecting Wes Miller’s River Runs Red to be a hit by any stretch of the imagination, but his film is an exercise in patience, as the fractured film jumps all over the place just drags the ideas of social justice and heroism back down on it’s own head to where the viewer is just begging the film to come to a close.

The “us vs. them” mentality that I mentioned acts as the fuel for River Runs Reds biggest themes, but it does so after a massively fractured backstory plays out on screen. Charles Coleman (award winner Taye Diggs) starts out the jumbled mess as a troubled young kid. He is trying to impart some fatherly wisdom to his young boy CJ about hard work and things paying off, but the tale is a bit jumbled. We get a jump back in time to when Charles is a troubled teen, soon trying to work his way into law school, and then segueing forward in time without explanation to him being the town’s only black judge. After another harsh jump in time we get to see CJ (Joseph Belk) following in his father and mother’s law enforcement footsteps (his mother was also a cop), only to get gunned down by a scummy cop named Rory (Gianni Capaldi), who is subsequently let go by the justice system.

Rory’s partner, Von (Luke Hemsworth) is a generally good guy for the most part, but he’s under the thumb of Rory’s domineering personality, and goes along with the cover up of the murder. Livid and grieved at the loss of his son, Charles Coleman turns to his police officer buddy Horace (John Cusack), who was supposed to give CJ a helping hand in the academy for moral support. However, when Horace starts offering more than just moral support, Charles teams up with another grieving minority father, Javier (George Lopez), and begins a vicious tale of retribution so that he can bring the shady cops to justice.

River Runs Red is a mess structurally, but it’s also a mess thematically. It’s obvious from the get go that everything and everyone in the movie is going to be painted with the most stereotypical and broadest of brushes. The evil cop Rory is telegraphed as being “bad” by his general gruff and slovenly demeanor, meant to make the audience go “ohhhhhh, yeah he’s gonna be the bad guy!”, while the amount of melodrama is on par with day time soap operas. Charles is seemingly the only black judiciary in town, and his son will soon be the only seemingly black cop in town as well. The bad guys laugh with maniacal laughter, and their only goal in the movie is to oppress minorities and get away with injustice. No matter how laughably bad it comes off as being, and laughably poor a job they do at it. Basically, the system is flawed and stacked against minorities from the get go, so woe is me mentality.

The thing that really sinks the ship is Charles and Javier teaming up to go full Death Wish on the bad cops. It’s not so much the vigilante aspect of the movie that shoots itself in the foot, but rather the hilarious ineptitude by the film makers at making an action scene worth watching. The hand to hand combat scenes are poorly done, the dialog poorly scripted, and there’s a car chase in the film that’s soooooooooooooooooooooooo laughably bad (you can actually see the car driving backwards in traffic at 15 miles an hour less, and it’s hysterically bad as it’s meant to be a high speed pursuit on camera) that I literally busted up laughing and rewound the scene 3 different times, all the while chuckling REALLY hard.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




4K Video: Video:

There’s not a lot of information out there on what Wes Miller used to shoot River Runs Red with, but from what I could glean through my contacts in the industry, as well as talking to other reviewers, this was most likely a digitally shot film, and then captured at 2K for the home video master, which is then used for the Blu-ray and upscaled for this 4K UHD release. The Blu-ray itself was “good”, but nothing special, and the 4K UHD shows the typical upticks in clarity and resolution for a 2K-4K upscale. Facial details and backgrounds are stable enough, showing of Taye Diggs good looking face, and the raw look of George Lopez’s craggy one. Backdrops are solid, with extra texturing noticeable here and there (especially on sidewalks and stone walls), but the colors are pretty grim and yellowish at times. There’s no mention of HDR or Dolby Vision on the disc anywhere, but if you check the information button on your TV or your 4K player it shows that basic HDR WAS used for this film. However, there’s not a whole lot of use in that department, as the colors don’t seem to have any extra pop or saturation to them. The blacks are solid enough, but they do show some smearing and splotchiness that comes and goes. Overall, this a decent 4K UHD, but one that really isn’t that much better (and only in very minor instances) than the 1080p disc.







Audio:

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA track found on both the Blu-ray and the 4K UHD disc is quite impressive in how it handles the dialog centric film, doing everything asked of it without question and with moderate ease. The track is highly front heavy, with most of the film’s run time spent with the vocals as the main focus, and that front heavy nature only broken up later with the vigilante actions of Javier and Charles. Surrounds are used well when needed, with the score adding a nice layering of sonic attention to the rears and sub. Dynamic range is noticeable, making some of the more action oriented scenes quite impressive, but overall this is a fairly front heavy track and one that is made so by the film genre it’s in, rather than any fault in the track itself.





Extras:

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Final Score:
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River Runs Red may have had noble intentions at one point, trying to show oppression and corruption in Wes Miller’s third feature film, but the end result is just painful. The scripting was so wince worthy I felt like a daily soap might have had better writing, the action was laughable, and painting everyone in the script with enormous stereotypical brush strokes robbed the film of any meaning it might have had on the cutting room floor. I wasn’t expecting a new magnum opus about social issues, but River Runs Red is just painful to watch and truly embarrassing for all involved (even John Cusack, who looks like he’s dozing on camera in every new movie he’s made for the last 10 years, so he doesn’t have that much recent history to be proud of to begin with). The 4K UHD disc is fairly mediocre for both audio and video, and there are no extras to be scene. Simply put, just skip this one. There are much better done films on social, racial and minority issues to be concerned about than to watch one that is so bad that it hurts. Just skip it.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Taye Diggs, John Cusack, Jennifer Tao, Luke Hemsworth, George Lopez, Gianni Capaldi, Briana Evigan, RJ Mitte, Steven Berrebi
Directed by: Wes Miller
Written by: Wes Miller
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1, HEVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Subtitles: English
Studio: Cinedigm
Rated: NR
Runtime: 95 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: December 11th, 2018

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Skip It

 

[Asere]

A movie with Taye Diggs, John Cusack and George Lopez is a recipe for disaster. Not that they are bad actor but these days its low budget films that they star in. John Cusack for one was an A list star for sure back in the 80's and then slowly but surely he started disappearing only to return to movies like this one. George is a brilliant comedian and he had a successful show and I am not really sure what he is doing these days. Seeing him in a movie like this is a surprise.

Thanks for the review. I will Skip it.

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Will skip it as well.