As a fan of Sofia Coppola, I was disappointed with The Beguiled, a film with paper-thin characters and a rather dull and trite plot that leads to an ineffectual finale. That said, I will give it some points for Farrell and Kidman’s performances and what production design I could see was well done.
The Beguiled
(2017)
Genre(s): Drama, Suspense
Universal | R – 93 min. – $34.98 | October 10, 2017
Date Published: 11/06/2017 | Author: The Movieman
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THE MOVIE — 1.5/5 |
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Plot Synopsis: Based on the Thomas Cillinan novel and a remake of the 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood, The Beguiled is set at a secluded girls’ boarding school in Civil War-era Virginia. When one of the girls comes across wounded Union soldier Corporal McBurney (COLIN FARRELL), she takes him back to the home and taken in by its headmistress Miss Martha (NICOLE KIDMAN). As the young women provide refuge and tend to his wounds, the house is taken over with sexual tension and envious rivalries as McBurney ingratiates himself to the other girls. But soon enough, things start taking a turn for the worse as the ladies fear for their lives.
Quick Hit Review: Writer/Director Sofia Coppola has been somewhat inconsistent showing flashes of brilliance with The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation, the latter one of my favorite movies of all-time. So despite some mixed reviews, I went in with some interest if only for the cast. Although it starts off well enough and does have some tense atmosphere with the Civil War going on in the background like canon fire in the distance, I found this film to be quite tedious and worst of all, a bit dull in some respects. The performances from Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman weren’t bad considering the material they had to work with and even Kirsten Dunst as a nice scene or two, but when you have characters you had no interest in one way or another, I had difficulty caring for their outcomes and any suspense, particularly the dinner scene that was shown in most trailers/TV spots, was non-existent.
I normally don’t focus a whole lot on the technical details, but boy is the film dark. Literally, not just tone. Not only were some nighttime shots where you can barely see anything, but even the daylight ones are rather murky as well. Not sure why Coppola and DP Philippe Le Sourd (Seven Pounds, A Good Year) went in that direction, but it didn’t add anything to the suspense and really does a disservice for perhaps quality for the production and costume designs. |
SPECIAL FEATURES – 1.5/5 |
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This release comes with a title-embossed slip cover. Inside is a DVD Copy and Digital HD redemption code. A Shift in Perspective (6:53; HD) looks at how Sofia Coppola put her touch on remaking the movie, placing more emphasis on the female viewpoints. A Southern Style (5:40; HD) takes a look at the production and costume designs while keeping it period correct. |
VIDEO – 3.5/5 |
| The Beguiled comes to Blu-ray through Universal and is presented with a 1.66 widescreen aspect ratio and a 1080p high-definition transfer (MPEG-4 AVC codec). This is an incredibly dark looking film as I discussed in my review. There’s not a whole lot of color which is in keeping with the gothic style so that’s fine, what I did find though was even detail during those dark scenes was hard to discern. I also thought some dark shots were on the murkier side, probably so the audience could see what was happening on screen. |
AUDIO – 3.0/5 |
| The disc comes with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 but it might as well have been a mono track. The vast majority of the movie is almost entirely focused on the center channel with minimal uses of the front and rear speakers, with only some negligible ambient noises in an otherwise lackluster lossless track. |
OVERALL – 1.5/5 |
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As a fan of Sofia Coppola, I was disappointed with The Beguiled, a film with paper-thin characters and a rather dull and trite plot that leads to an ineffectual finale. That said, I will give it some points for Farrell and Kidman’s performances and what production design I could see was well done. The Blu-ray release has throwaway featurettes while the video/audio transfers were average. |
Check out some more 1080p screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers.