Reach Me is a mess of a film that began with the screenplay and continued on with some poor performances by a mostly respectable cast. This is something not even worth a rental and will no doubt be in the bargain bin in no time.
Reach Me
(2014)
Genre(s): Comedy, Drama
Millennium Entertainment | PG13 – 92 min. – $24.99 | December 30, 2014
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MOVIE INFO: Directed by: John Herzfeld Writer(s): John Herzfeld (written by) Cast: Danny Aiello, Tom Berenger, Lauren Cohan, Kevin Connolly, Terry Crews, Cary Elwes, Kelsey Grammer, Omari Hardwick, Thomas Jane, Ryan Kwanten, Nelly, David O’Hara, Kyra Sedgwick, Tom Sizemore, Sylvester Stallone, Danny Trejo DISC INFO: Audio: English (Dolby TrueHD MA 5.1) |
THE MOVIE – 1.25/5
At the end of the ensemble comedy-drama Reach Me, the only thing I could think is “WTF did I just watch?” This is one of the more surreal movies I’ve seen in some time… and not in a good way.
The plot surrounds a popular self help book entitled “Reach Me” and an obsession to discover the author’s identity with a pseudonym penname and an all around reclusive existence. We then follow the path of several people:
Colette (KYRA SEDGWICK) has recently been released from prison and is picked up by her niece Eve (ELIZABETH HENSTRIDGE) who is an actress recently back from filming her first speaking role where she was sexually assaulted by her co-star (CARY ELWES); on their way to Eve’s home, they t-bone the vehicle of a undercover detective named Wolfie (THOMAS JANE) who, much to the chagrin of his priest (DANNY AIELLO), has the propensity of killing people (justified); tabloid magazine editor Gerald (SYLVESTER STALLONE) assigns one of his writers, Roger (KEVIN CONNOLLY) to investigate the true identity of the author of “Reach Me”; his investigation takes him to the reclusive author’s (TOM BERENGER) handlers in Wilson (TERRY CREWS) and Kate (LAUREN COHAN) whom Roger has an instant attraction towards.
As you can see, Reach Me stretches to make this a Crash-like interconnected ensemble story and miserably fails at every stretch. The film has a plethora of problems from a half-baked screenplay (written by director John Herzfeld who has a cameo as… a director) to surprisingly lackluster performances. Often times I can watch a bad movie and pinpoint an area or two where an improvement can be made to make a bad film adequate, but none exist here. This clearly was a $5 million passion project by Herzfeld (and Stallone) that went wrong.
The more interesting aspect of this film was behind-the-scenes as, according to Wikipedia anyway, an investor pulled his/her funding and filmmakers, including Stallone who apparently was heavily involved, first went to Kickstarter but eventually raised another $180k to finish filming. Beyond that, there were also allegations of extras and others not getting paid, so it’s immensely more interesting than the film itself.
As I said before, Reach Me was written and directed by John Herzfeld whose resume is limited but one entry stood out: he directed a making-of documentary for The Expendables which is how he wrangled Stallone who no doubt in turn got the likes of Terry Crews and Kelsey Grammer and probably called in a few favors for the others as well. It’s a shame that a quasi-talented cast was squandered on a poorly written screenplay.
SPECIAL FEATURES – 0/5
This release came with a semi-glossy slip cover otherwise no features were included.
VIDEO – 4.0/5
Reach Me arrives on Blu-ray presented with a 1080p high-definition transfer and a 1.78 widescreen aspect ratio. The picture here isn’t fantastic probably due to a low quality film stock or camera; detail is decent enough but I did notice a few instances of banding and even slight aliasing, though nothing distracting. Colors tend to be bright enough, just all in all, it’s not a transfer that pops off the screen.
AUDIO – 3.75/5
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track provides good dialogue levels yet everything else is rather tame from the music/soundtrack to ambient noises which do come through the rear channels, but it’s fairly minimal. However, considering this is a mostly dialogue-driven film anyway, this is a perfectly adequate lossless track.
OVERALL – 2.0/5
Overall, Reach Me is a mess of a film that began with the screenplay and continued on with some poor performances by a mostly respectable cast. This is something not even worth a rental and will no doubt be in the bargain bin in no time. The Blu-ray released by Millennium Entertainment has no features but adequate video/audio transfers.
Published: 12/20/2014