Thursday, June 13, 2024

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: The Informers

 


The Informers is a 2008 movie starring Amber Heard, Winona Ryder, Kim Bassinger, Billy Bob Thornton, Mickey Rourke, Jon Foster, Brad Renfro, and Chris Isaak. I was kind of lukewarm to the movie, even though I liked a lot of the actors in it. Kim Basinger and Billy Bob Thornton play an estranged couple trying to make their marriage work. Their son (Foster) is a drug dealer who, along with his girlfriend (Heard), is sleeping around with his large circle of friends. The Mickie Rourke storyline just seemed unnecessary and shoehorned in without being tied to anything else going on in the movie. His only "tie" to the other characters is that his nephew (played by Brad Renfro in the last role before his death) worked in the building where Amber Heard's character lived. Also, the title refers to a band that is seen throughout the movie, but the movie has very little to do with any of the band members after about the first third of the movie. The band is just mainly there in the background.

The Blu-Ray's A/V quality is fine but not spectacular. I think the movie looks and sounds about as good as you'd expect a non-sci-fi, non-big-budget movie that is almost 10 years that did not get a high-quality HD transfer to look and sound. That said, there are some great shots of Hollywood that look very nice in HD. The only extras are a 15-minute behind-the-scenes feature, a commentary on the movie with the director and some of the cast members, and then some trailers. Overall, the movie is good but not great. It is a very dark movie that really boils down to being about excess and immorality, with a focus on the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll culture of the 1980s. There is a storyline about AIDS, storylines about infidelity, kidnapping, etc., but it is kind of a jumbled story where the characters are all somewhat tied together but it is telling separate stories about them. Because of that, it can be hard to track everything happening in the movie and you really do have to pay attention to it in order to follow it. Many people will and do hate the movie, a lot will love it, and some will be in the middle. I do think it is worth checking out, but it is not a must-see by any means.

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