An engrossing, exceedingly literate film, Starting Out in the Evening is an artfully understated portrait of an aged novelist struggling with the flickering flame of creativity’s muse. Anchored by a superb performance from Frank Langella, this is a film that combines the best of intimate stage drama with the best of personal, well-crafted independent filmmaking; the result is something that works on multiple levels, and allows viewers both young and old and everywhere in between a looking-glass glimpse into the other’s psyche.



The story centers around Langella’s Leonard Schiller, a once-famous New York writer now given to small, pedestrian rituals. He’s the standard analogue man in an increasingly digital world; his books long out-of-print, Leonard doesn’t take freelance gigs writing advertising copy because he deems it an objectionable compromise; he instead pecks away at a novel he’s been working on for more than a decade, and enjoys simple get-togethers with his adult daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor, fantastic). Despite having suffered a heart attack the previous year, Leonard still doesn’t have much use for self-reflection, until Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose), an ambitious grad student defined by an obscure hunger for self-definition, enters his life. Leonard’s early novels had an electrifying impact on Heather, and she now wants to use her thesis project to spur a rediscovery of his work.

At once shaken and emboldened by their challenging interview sessions, Leonard’s staid, respectful tolerance for Heather slowly melts into consideration. An indefinable and precarious intimacy develops between them, but the stars in Heather’s eyes dim when she slowly comes to the conclusion that Leonard is too closed-off from certain unacknowledged traumas of his past to ever again write a truly great book. This cooling coincides, meanwhile, with an unexpected turn in Ariel’s life when she rekindles a relationship with ex-boyfriend Casey (a wonderful Adrian Lester), a matter that greatly worries Leonard given their differing priorities (she wants kids, Casey avowedly doesn’t) in life.

Adapted by Fred Parnes and director Andrew Wagner from Brian Morton’s novel of the same name, Starting Out in the Evening is characterized by a great and involving sense of character detail; the movie grapples in an intellectually honest fashion with notions of aging, responsibility and reinvention, and how they intersect with creative fire. Through it all, Wagner (the 2005 Sundance entry The Talent Given Us) trades in an unfussy style that keeps the focus firmly on his characters. The one big knock on the movie is that it has such a strong sense of Leonard that Heather is a bit recklessly sketched. While intelligently written — she’s certainly no bubbled-headed ditz — Heather’s occasional lack of recognition at how others perceive her actions seems implausible, and after a while, her pluck becomes a bit irksome.

I also at first felt that the manner in which Heather, and the movie, eventually address the inevitable elephant in the room, the potential of romantic connection, rings a bit false. Then I ruminated on it, listened to Wagner’s audio commentary during a second viewing, and came around. What one actually sees here is something quite rare in movies, and that’s why it feels a bit discombobulating — namely, characters circling one another, then reaching out and pulling back, several times, in small but meaningful ways.

Through it all, Langella shines. He’s well known for his stage portrayals of larger-than-life characters — including Dracula and Sherlock Holmes, among others — but his perfectly modulated performance here is one of managed disappointment, something apparently too subtle for Academy Award voters to recognize. Leonard is an emotionally imploded man, able, in his great intellect, to parse and justify his self-interested behaviors. In his stillness and the consistency of his proper actions (both in movement and diction), Langella captures the character’s regret in evocative fashion before the story even spells out the particulars. It’s a breathtaking thing — the sort of intimate, ultra-specific and lived-in portrayal one typically sees only on the stage. That it’s captured for posterity only makes one have more affection for this little gem of a film.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Starting Out in the Evening is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with a pair of Dolby digital 5.1 and 2.0 audio tracks. Unfortunately, the disc’s roster of supplemental bonus materials is pretty slim, and totally lacking in any insight or reminiscence from Langella, which is a shame. Apart from a TV spot and the theatrical trailer, the only extra is the aforementioned feature-length audio commentary track with Wagner. He’s a really smart guy, and a consistently warm guide throughout, but some of his remarks, especially early on, seem a bit scripted. He also rather rarely dotes on physical production detail, except when talking about a few cinematographic choices or set-ups, and composer Adam Gorgoni’s creation of a musical cue of admiration when Heather first enters Leonard’s apartment, and writing room. A lot of his talk is about “finding the democratic balance of storytelling,” which can come across as too theoretical, and lacking in specifics. Thankfully that’s not the case for the movie’s charged kitchen scene between Leonard and Heather, or its reunion between Ariel and Casey, for which Wagner amiably confesses borrowing a line (“I know your silences…”) from another one of Morton’s books. To purchase Starting Out in the Evening on DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

You have to give it up for Poison frontman Bret Michaels. The guy is 45 years old, and still rocks the “mandana” and eyeliner with devotion. Forgiving the fact that its airbrushed cover totally makes him look like a chick, the DVD release of the first season of Rock of Love — his VH-1 dating show, in which 25 well-toned ex-strippers, damaged little girls, would-be actresses, current strippers, rocker chicks and functional alcoholics… err, I mean, lovely young ladies do battle for an all-access pass to the rocker’s heart — makes for deliciously trashy and engrossing entertainment.



Rock of Love partially takes its cue from Public Enemy hype-man Flavor Flav’s Flavor of Love, in which trainwreck entertainment is seemingly as much the goal as the star/host’s ultimate happiness. That means a Bel-Air mansion, a burly bodyguard (in this case, Michaels’ pal “Big John”) who doubles as a message deliverer to the girls, some goofy competitions, lots of free alcohol and plenty of attendant drama from said free alcohol. Along the way, as the group is “split between the slutty, outgoing girls and the bitchy, introverted girls,” as one lass shrewdly observes (proudly identifying herself as being part of the former cabal), the expected name-calling, screeching and quasi-physical confrontations ensue, with “clown tits,” “your meth-scratched face” and “waste of sperm and egg” ranking as some of the choicest insults. Hearteningly, though, there is a (platonic?) love connection between two of the show’s dimmer-bulb blondes, who become fast friends (“If we put our boobs together, we can think better!”) and seem to care more (much more) about each other’s feelings than any potential attraction thrown their way by Michaels.

There are a couple other notable differences and upgrades, though, that make Rock of Love surprisingly, almost shamefully compelling when stacked up against other celeb-dating shows. First, compared to Flavor Flav, Michaels is — how to put this? — a more eloquent and forthcoming articulator of his own feelings and desires. He may not be the brightest guy in the world and his air-quote concerns may be myopic or not of the average man, but he still comes across as a pretty straight shooter. That may seem like small potatoes, but having at least a somewhat sincere emotional guide through the otherwise orchestrated maelstrom that is women competing for attention and camera time is important. The show also allows for a few surprising glimpses of vulnerability, since Michaels is an insulin-dependent diabetic. Of course, it’s still telling that during the second of the show’s 13 episodes, Michaels makes the ladies simulate phone sex with him. (Personally knowing one of the lawyers who helped draft the series’ sexual harassment waiver language makes this all the more hilarious.)

Winnowed to three, the final contestants consist of Las Vegas dancer Heather (hopelessly buried in the back in the above photo), absolutely unhinged rocker chick Lacey (the Kool-Aid redhead in the middle, to the left of Michaels) and pink-and-blonde-haired Jes (front, right), who seems to be the most normal and have the least agenda of the trio. (That she’s the only one now without her own eponymous web site may also say something.) Michaels’ inherent instincts for poor choices run up against a seemingly sincere desire for settled-down normalcy, but given that the series just completed its second season run on VH-1, is it any wonder or shock that the five-week-long Rock of Love didn’t result in blessed nuptials? Hosted by Riki Rachtman, the reunion show included here is baffling and incongruous with much of what precedes it, only because it was never made clear that immediately after the show, Michaels and his chosen gal would be separated for six months. Hmmm… strange.

Spread out over three discs in three slimline cases, the first season of Rock of Love is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a simple stereo audio track, and comes attractively packaged in a master cardboard slipcover, with Michaels’ huge, mandana-covered grille looming over a pair of woman’s legs. Supplemental extras consist of a five-minute “super-trailer”/promo reel for the series, a four-and-a-half-minute music video for “Get It On” (a song written by Michaels and credited to “Bret & the Booze Bunnies”), and a five-minute-plus sing-along of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” during which Michaels reveals he penned the Poison chart-topper in a Dallas laundromat after calling home and hearing a guy in the background with his then-girlfriend.

There are also three deleted scenes, all of which are sort of perversely fascinating. The first is a four-minute drunken food fight; the second is a three-minute segment in which Lacey antagonizes other girls by dancing around naked and shouting that fur is murder (they retaliate by tossing a slab of raw meat at her when she’s in the shower). What’s interesting here, though, is that the sequence shows Heather egging Lacey on, and being much more of an instigator than previously shown. The third clip is a six-and-a-half-minute reel of unbleeped phone sex chat between Michaels and the girls. As they take turns sharing the line, talking dirty and writhing about on a couch, Michaels’ disembodied head creepily floats in the corner of the screen, while he purrs strange things like, “What kind of animal would you spank me like?” (What?!) Even though that makes the series sound sketchy and lascivious (and don’t get me wrong, it is), Rock of Love manages to make an impression because Michaels is at least always honest and sincere about what’s going on his head, and how difficult it is to manage some of the mutually exclusive impulses he feels. A rock star with a brain? Well… yeah, sort of. Who knew? To purchase the set via Amazon, click here. A- (Series) B+ (Disc)

The concept of urban ownership is born of the latter half of the civil rights movement, and predicated upon notions and concepts of self-empowerment that Dr. Martin Luther King and others strived hard to impart in a generation of African-American youngsters. As those leaders have come of age and continued King’s work, they’ve begun to focus on providing to kids in their neighborhoods the encouragement and the same hand up that many of them never received. Winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Boston International Film Festival, The Pact is a stirring documentary account of the big, local difference that can be made through such efforts.

Directed by Andrea Kalin, The Pact tells the gritty, provocative true story of three best friends from the tough streets of Newark who made it out of their neighborhood to become doctors and returned home as men. By high school, Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt and George Jenkins already knew too much about the drugs, crime and grinding poverty that colored their world, but they pledged to help each other make it to both college and medical school. All three young men beat the statistical odds — which saw only a handful of minorities from their school go on to four-year colleges — became doctors, and then decided to return to their communities to practice medicine. Authoring a book together on their word-is-bond uplift, the trio have turned their focus — despite grueling personal workloads — on inspiring others to stay off drugs, stay away from gangs, stay in school and focus on achievement.

Nicely photographed by Bryan Sarkinen, The Pact unfolds in a highly personal and anecdotal style, with plenty of interview material, and proud, cackling, devotional bragging from the boys’ third grade teacher, Viola Johnson. Davis (above left) talks movingly about the completeness he feels working at Beth Israel Medical Complex, the hospital where he was born, and overall the movie plays as a brisk, booster-shot infusion of positivism and inspiration, with the three subjects holding forth on their “three Ds” of self-betterment — dedication, discipline and determination.

Housed in a regular Amray case, The Pact is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with 15 chapter stops. Unlike many other WGBH releases, there’s a brief bonus featurette included here, a three-minute mini-trailer of sorts, featuring words of praise from Bill Cosby. In addition to links to The Pact‘s web site, there is also a downloadable DVD-ROM guide highlighting the doctors’ “3-D principle.” To order the DVD, or any release from WGBH, phone (800) 949-8670 or visit their web by clicking here. For more general information, click here. B+ (Movie) C (Disc)

Classic texts endure in part, I suspect, because their adaptations to stage, screen and film provide a training ground for young actors, and they’re also easier to finance and sell (i.e., a known commodity) than some original script by an author who may or may not be heard of. So it’s a cycle of production and re-exhibition, all of which in turn reinforces the original book or play’s elevated status. All of this and more came to mind while watching this very so-so 2007 Masterpiece Theater version of E.M. Forster’s classic love story A Room with a View, directed by Nicholas Renton.

Opening in Florence, Italy in 1912, A Room with a View centers around Lucy Honeychurch (Elaine Cassidy), a young woman who is eager for adventure but finds herself stuck in a safe haven of English tourists, spinsters and clergymen. After she makes the acquaintance of socialist Mr. Emerson (Timothy Spall, most recently of Enchanted) and his son George (Hot Fuzz‘s Rafe Spall, Timothy’s real-life son), she finds herself intrigued. Sparks fly between Lucy and George, but Lucy does her best to ignore them. After an astute observer purposefully mistranslates her request for “the good men” (clergymen) and sends her into the arms of “a good man,” Lucy receives a passionate kiss from George in the middle of a field of poppies. Both profoundly shocked and excited, Lucy is whisked away to Rome by her concerned chaperone before much else can come of this situation.

It’s there that Lucy meets the most suitable Cecil Vyse (Inspector Lewis‘ Laurence Fox), a staid and proper chap whom Lucy’s brother Freddy (Tag Stewart) derides as a straight arrow, and not someone with whom he can “muck in or muck about.” Cecil courts Lucy with high-falutin’ language and labyrinthine compliments, calling her not straightforward beautiful, but possessing of a beauty that is “the embodiment of eternal female mystery.” Meanwhile, back in England, George reappears just as Lucy is on the brink of marriage to Cecil; determined to sop the marriage, he declares his love for her. How will Lucy choose between them? Or is she destined for a life of spinsterhood?

Cassidy makes for a fairly appealing Lucy — she seems tremulous and excited at the same time, which is at the core of Lucy’s being. The rest of the acting is fairly solid too, though the movie is howlingly over-scored, with dubious compositions drowning out the dialogue in many a scene — dialogue that is frequently poorly dubbed, it must be said. It’s also a bit silly that the bare buttocks of men (George and Freddy go swimming in a creek in one scene) are blurred out in a couple wide shots; either shoot around it or not, but don’t stoop to this ridiculous level of editorial censorship. Overall, though, while the story certainly carries its own weight, director Renton does little to shape the material in a favorable light. He just points, shoots and relies on curious insert shots to save him on various edits. Thumbs down on the construction and arrangement, then.

Housed in a regular Amray case, this production of A Room with a View is presented in 16×9 anamorphic widescreen, and divided into eight chapters. As with most other WGBH releases there are no on-disc special features, which is a shame since the closing credits indicate the existence, on the PBS web site, of an interview with Emmy-winning classic adaptation specialist Andrew Davies, who wrote the screenplay here. To order A Room with a View or any release from WGBH, phone (800) 949-8670 or visit their web by clicking here. C+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)

A friend asked me about writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s bold oil-boom epic There Will Be Blood not too long ago, having not seen it in theaters, and I explained to him that I found myself in the somewhat difficult and unusual position of having to stand in principled opposition to the cineaste-class who’ve declared it a top-shelf classic right out of the gate, while at the same time having to defend the movie against its most ardent detractors. The truth about the movie, as with much of life, is that it’s somewhere in the middle, between the poles of the most fervently staked out positions.

Anderson has never been one to play it safe. Whereas plenty of indie directors
gladly cede to a bit of formula for the security and financing of a regular studio shingle,
Anderson’s films have almost gotten progressively more idiosyncratic
and left-of-center, and that trend continues with his fifth feature, one of the more critically praised films of last year. Whatever one thinks of it, there isn’t any legitimate way to characterize There Will Be Blood except as a striking work, and almost inarguably by someone of great, innate
virtuosity. Even for a filmmaker who has reveled in the heyday of the
San Fernando Valley porn boom (Boogie Nights), made it rain frogs (Magnolia) and centered a story of emotional constipation and romantic bloom partially around pudding rebates (Punch-Drunk Love),
this is an audacious movie. It’s also a polarizing, punishing work, and to my mind one that is at least somewhat backwards-plotted, with a foreboding title and forestalled conflict working to give lent importance to an otherwise sketchily defined narrative proper.

Using the basic narrative template of Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel “Oil!” as a jumping-off point, There Will Be Blood
unfolds over the course of a couple decades, against the provocative
and combustible frontier of California’s turn-of-the-20th-century
petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times of Daniel
Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis),
a straight-talking but paranoid and amoral would-be businessman who
transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner into a self-made,
independent oil tycoon. A brutal mineshaft accident busts open his nose and fractures
his leg, but gives Plainview a small stake from which to start — as well as an adopted son, the offspring of a coworker who doesn’t survive.

When Plainview
taps an underground vein, more money follows. Then Plainview gets a mysterious tip
from a strange passerby, Paul Sunday (Little Miss Sunshine‘s Paul Dano), that there’s a little town out west where oil is literally oozing right
up out of the ground. Sensing opportunity, Plainview sets out with his
right-hand man, Fletcher Hamilton (Ciaran Hinds, above right), and young son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier),
to take their chances in dusty Little Boston, a hardscrabble community
where the main excitement comes from the holy-roller church of
charismatic preacher Eli (Dano again), Paul’s pious twin brother.

Plainview has a knack for saying the things that he knows people
like to hear, talking about the schools, fresh bread and milk, and
other goods and services that Little Boston will accrue as a result of
their collective acquiescence for his development. An opportunist
himself, meanwhile, Eli wants assurances that his church will see its
proper share of the profits from the drilling. The rest of the film finds Plainview growing his business and grappling
with three major personal conundrums and crises — the sudden arrival of
a long-lost half-brother, Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor),
an oil well accident that robs H.W. of his hearing, and
a continued, quiet clash of wills with Eli. As the oil wells raise
Plainview’s fortunes along with those of all around him, these
conflicts slowly rise, and the values of faith, community, hard
work and ambition are imperiled by the corruption and deception born of this “black gold.”

From its purposefully threatening title on down to the gleeful nastiness with which Plainview is imbued, There Will Be Blood
feels like the first work in which Anderson has come fully to peace
with the notion of evil in the world, or at least human wickedness and
wanton destruction. Plainview is, to put it politely, a real
son-of-a-bitch, and a man whose heart hardens further with each dollar
he earns. Anderson’s screenplay easily, and deservedly, draws comparisons to The Treasure of Sierra Madre and Citizen Kane,
both by way of its setting and themes — the wild, every-man-for-himself
western edge of the early 20th century, and the manner in which the
movie assays masculinized competition and cresting paranoia. What
Anderson expertly conveys is a deceptive sense of epic scope. We
scarcely leave Planeview’s side, but, thanks to some economically
condensed head-butting with peers, paradoxically have a keen sense of
his place in the oil industry, and the industry’s burgeoning importance
to the country at large.

Similarly, There Will Be Blood’s engaging and effective
evocation of early film history, and silent film in particular, is
purposeful, willful — from the emphasis placed on cinematographer
Robert Elswit’s gorgeous, justly lauded images to the focus on an
isolated, increasingly paranoid central figure. Meanwhile, besting even Michael Mann’s Ali — which opened under the pleading, almost
mournful strains of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me,” for seven
wordless minutes — Anderson’s movie opens with a 14-minute passage in
which no dialogue is spoken.

“And yet,” it must be said, followed by ellipses. For all its superlative production design and exacting sense of order and construction, There Will Be Blood also suffers a bit from a feeling of stifling self-consciousness.
The
film holds one’s attention, but it also feels both airless and maybe just a little self-satisfied,
never more so than in its finale, which (over)reaches for profundity
via an act of arbitrary violence. To call the movie an intellectual
sham would be an overstatement, but
there is a same-note, single-dimensionality to There Will Be Blood,
an anemia aped by Radiohead guitarist’s Jonny Greenwood’s memorable score for the
film — a THX test of nervous string work (particularly the track “Henry
Plainview”) that, somewhat like the story as a whole, comes across as
an elongated act of precious deception.

Plainview and Eli circle one another — not really enemies per se,
but barely swallowed discontent bubbling in each of them — yet little
changes for either man. The audience watches, meanwhile, but doesn’t
deeply identify with either man, particularly once the film awkwardly ducks
forward in time to 1927, when Plainview’s obsessive bitterness and
mistrust has calcified into performance-art-level theatricality, no
matter Day-Lewis’ mesmeric charm. The film could be read partially as an
allegory of false prophets — of preacher-politician-authority figures
who slyly trade in falsehoods, or talk out of one side of their mouth
while lining their coffers with private gain. But the character of Eli,
as well as Plainview’s conflict with him, isn’t really deeply sketched
out enough to support a sustained vindication of this reading. There Will Be Blood is, it seems — first, foremost and
achingly so — a movie for cineastes, with less of a realized arc than
an ending simply designed to be written about. There are far greater sins, of
course, but this eminence front rings of false modesty… or perhaps just
a savvy bit of financial capital raising, after all.

Housed in a cardboard cover, the two-disc collector’s edition version of There Will Be Blood comes presented in its original 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio, along with a superlative Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound mix, available in English, French and Spanish (all with optional subtitles). A text excerpt from Oil! nicely graces the set’s gate-fold packaging, but doesn’t augur well for the rest of the supplemental bonus material, all of which is housed on the second disc. Along with the cursory inclusions of the movie’s teaser and theatrical trailer, there are two unprocessed deleted scenes and a dailies reel, the latter featuring an alternate take of the explosive restaurant scene between Plainview and other oilmen. All of these, in aggregate, run about just under a dozen minutes.

Eschewing the sort of audio commentary offerings that made the Boogie Nights DVD such a treat, there is instead a silent 15-minute montage of scenes and historical photographs that served as inspiration for Anderson in his crafting of the story. These is interesting, but, absent further contextual discussion, eventually becomes tedious. The only other inclusion, The Story of Petroleum, seemingly rings a few cool bells — a 26-minute doc! — but is in actuality not a making-of featurette but rather a silent-era industrial filmstrip that overlaps a good portion of the previous 15 minutes of footage. The lack of discussion from Anderson on a film with such an authorial stamp is severely problematic, but not necessarily a mortal wound. No, that designation would be saved for the lack of participation from Day-Lewis, for a role widely, and not undeservingly, acclaimed as among the most searingly memorable screen turns of the past decade. To have no chats with them — especially given all the awards-season stumping they did for the film — on a so-called “collector’s edition” is ridiculous. Even notorious commentary soundtrack-hater and DVD minimalist David Lynch thinks this DVD is short on supplemental insight. Still, to purchase the movie via Amazon anyway, click here. B (Movie) C- (Disc)

The new straight-to-video erotic thriller Impulse, written and directed by Charles T. Kanganis and starring Willa Ford, certainly has the right impulse when it opens on three topless women writhing about. Ample nudity ensues, too, meaning that the movie — about a game of awakened, lusty, domestic role-play gone awry — certainly hits its target quotient of bared bosoms.

The story centers on Claire Dennison (erstwhile pop singer and Playmate Ford, below, also of Dancing with the Stars), a beautiful, sensuous advertising executive who is desperate to arouse the desires of her stuffy, slightly older psychiatrist husband, Jonathan (Angus Macfadyen, of Braveheart and the last two Saw pictures), as well as start a family (goals that seem somewhat at odds, but hey, whatever). To further her desire for spark and reconnection, Claire devises a fantasy role-play game involving dress-up (for a sexy clip, click here). After a rebuffed attempt, Jonathan — who always seems to be cooking — acknowledges that there’s been a reduction in the passion department, and cedes to Claire’s idea to spice things up. After Jonathan takes the bait in one encounter, though, things become more complicated. It’s not long before Claire realizes that she’s playing a dangerous game of seduction with someone very familiar, yet also completely unknown — a man, Simon Phillips (also Macfadyen), who looks exactly like her husband. Whoops. Desperate to end the affair, she tells the stranger the game is over, and yet it seems the drama has just begun.

Multi-hyphenate Kanganis (Intent to Kill) infuses Impulse with some decent production value, to the degree that he can. And he also doesn’t shy away from the perverted elements of the conceit, having Macfadyen’s character, umm, smell his fingers after manually stimulating Claire in one scene, and also intimating much more when Claire furiously brushes her teeth after an illicit encounter. So there’s some skeevy titillation here.

Unfortunately, Ford (whose left arm-band tattoo, above, can be glimpsed here through concealment make-up) isn’t necessarily the right actress upon which to hang this material; she’s got the right set of buns, but less convincing assertiveness (“What’s going on out there is way beyond our comprehension — it’s genius!” she says in the scene that introduces her character, meaning to show us her brassy occupational super-competence) and imperiled sympathy. She’s not awful, though — just not very consistent. And it’s worth pointing out, too, that Macfadyen, for whom the movie is really a showcase, succumbs to a lot of the same ping-pong variance that Ford does. For a lot of the running time, one feels this is mostly a matter of a production schedule crunch — that with more time for extra takes and set-ups, this schlocky-fun premise could have been given a real kick in the pants, and made into something a bit more interesting. Then the movie concludes with exactly the sort of stand-off (a gun, mistaken identity) one imagines given the parameters of the story established from the second act on, and the raison d’etre for Impulse, obscured momentarily, again becomes clear: boobs.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Impulse comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks in English, French and Portuguese, and a stereo track in Spanish. Since tales of sexual intrigue translate so well, there are also optional subtitles in English and five foreign languages. I guess Ford — who’s starring in a forthcoming tele-biopic of Anna Nicole Smith — may yet get some play internationally. A gallery of a dozen trailers, including for The Tattooist, The Good Night, Untraceable and Outpost, is the only bonus feature. For another clip, click here; to purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C- (Disc)