Film Noir [DVD]

Nothing special, 29 Jun 2009

Nothing special mainly applies to the animation of this feature. While it looks good in stills, in motion its not very pretty at all.

The framerate and animation is very jerky, characters do not move fluidly, they lack animation and everything lacks detail. In truth, nearly every object in the movie is square. Beds dont have duvet covers, theres no sign of any carpets or wallpaper either. The characters faces are all basic, and just dont manage to convey the severity of any situation. Theres just not enough there to keep you visually stimulated.

When detail is required though, normally when outside, they actually use real life pictures/footage, but downgrade them, to try and make it fit in with the action. It just doesnt work, and makes the CGI characters look even worse. Cars especially suffer through this technique. When they try to have a CGI car drive off into the distance (on a live action backdrop) it actually looks like its shrinking on the spot and not going anywhere.

Its tough to say whether these were stylistic choices or budget restraints though. Some outside scenes are clearly done using real footage, but a number of them -anything with trees basically – were downgraded to make them look like they were drawn, which you can easily tell they werent. And by the end of the movie most live action footage wasnt downgraded at all, and it was just black and white footage with CGI cars/people moving around. Rather than coming across as artistic it comes across as lazy and cheap looking.

The style of some of the action pieces isnt bad, but due to the stilted animation and at times laughable effects its hard to be that impressed.

The soundtrack and voice acting was fine, if predictable. Most of the movie has the familiar ‘detective walking in the rain’ bluesy soundtrack. The voice actors were convincing enough, nothin great as it all seemed a little too flat and monotone at times, but they did the job.

The storyline is easily the best part of the movie, in saying that, its entirely predictable but does hold your interest. At times though -due to the narrative and the way the character goes about things- it feels like your watching a 3D adventure game, ala Broken Sword.

That bring me to my final point, the main gripe with this movie is it feels, and looks like, a pre-visualisation movie for something better that should have came later. The way characters move, the lack of detail, it all looks like it was meant to show you what a good movie they could have made. But perhaps Clive Owen was busy so they canned it and thought, lets tart it up a bit (not a lot mind) and release it as a “stylistic animated detective film noir feature”. Or, something like that anyway.

So, to summarise. What should be Film Noirs big selling point, is easily its biggest weakness -the animation. The storyline is fine, and may get itself some fans, but without enough detail to reel you in, it all falls a little flat.

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