7 Seconds – Blu-ray Disc Review
August 8, 2008 – 10:14 pm - Posted by: Brendan SurplessTags: BD-Live, Deobia Oparei, Simon Fellows, Sony, Tazmin Outhwaite, Wesley Snipes
has an average rating of 4.8 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
Dolby TrueHD 5.1
include BD-Live but no other features!!
– 
– 2005
– 96 minutes
– Sony
Overall Verdict – Skip This One
Buy it for $17.49 @ Amazon.com
— Review written by: Brendan Surpless —
The Movie Itself was directed by Simon Fellows (known for “Until Death“). Captain Jack Tolliver (Wesley Snipes) is a former commando turned professional thief who seems to know what he’s doing. His latest planned theft revolves around a series of cars. But when a group of Russian mob members kills most of Jack’s crew and kidnaps his second in command, Jack must rescue his friend. Add in that before Jack escape from these gangsters he managed to grab a mysterious silver case whose contents the Russians will do anything to get a hold of.
The first major, major flaw of this movie is that there just isn’t a single reason EVER given as to why we should care about ANY of these characters. We’re immediately thrown into Jack’s world of thievery. He steals for a living with his friend in tow stealing bigger and bigger objects. Suddenly he takes this Van Gogh painting by accident and now goes from thief to sudden hero of the day? Give me a break folks. I will admit that Snipes can be a decent actor (he is enjoyable in “Demolition Man” and “Blade“) but he is just so boring in this movie. He lacks charm, skill or even wit. He doesn’t act with any sense of style and seems like he’s doing this just so he can receive a quick paycheck. Never does he show emotion resulting in a very, very wooden performance. Something funny is that a quick glance at his current iMDB shows that the man is doing nothing but DTV films. Has he become the next Seagal or Van Damme?
I thought for a second or two that “7 Seconds” with its somewhat interesting plot might not be that bad of a movie. Perhaps Snipes might do a halfway passable job or maybe the story or other acting might come through. Such isn’t the case here as this movie is a complete waste of 90 minutes of film.
Video Quality on this release is 1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a BD-50 — 50 gigabyte Dual Layered Blu-ray Disc. Now this was an oddity in my mind. During the first five or so minutes of this movie, I noticed that everything seemed like dull and lacked any real clarity that I had wondered if Sony had sent me the DVD instead of the Blu-ray. I took out the disc and clearly the disc was labeled Blu-ray. So why did each and every shot seem so blah? The answer isn’t quite sure folks. Perhaps because the movie was low-budgeted. Anyhow colors are way too muted resulting in no real sense of definition or “3-D pop” that most hi-def releases have. Grain is present but is more film grain. The biggest letdown here, which I’ll say again, is how lacking everything is. It’s almost like Sony just threw this on a disc and said let’s call it a day. If this is how the 1080p version looks imagine how the 480p version looks? A highly disappointing “2 Star Rating“.
Audio Quality on this release is in English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround. Dynamics were solid enough in particular during the varying gun battles. Bullets zinged and zipped by creating a nice atmosphere here. Dialogue was recorded a good enough level never really resulting in any volume change. LFE was rather good for a DTV film with bass arriving in a low, deep manner (notice this during the opening sequences). Of interesting note is that this soundtrack is one of the more active and robust soundtracks I’ve heard especially when considering that this is a DTV movie. All in all this “3 1/2 Star Rating” is good enough for the material at hand.
Bonus Materials
- BD-Live is included on this release which allows users with a “Profile 2.0” Blu-ray Disc Player (such as the PS3) to access online content sometimes specific to the title and also feature trailers to current and upcoming Sony films in both HD (Hi-Def) and SD (Standard Def). This title will not go “BD-Live” (so-to-speak) until street date so I can’t tell you if this features any title specific content yet but I’ll be sure to update this after it has been released.
Overall, the bonus materials don’t exist which isn’t much of a surprise.
Blu-ray Disc packaging:
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