THE PLOT THUS FAR
Set in contemporary New York City, a seemingly ordinary teenager, Clary Fray (Lily Collins), discovers she is the descendant of a line of Shadowhunters, a secret cadre of young half-angel warriors locked in an ancient battle to protect our world from demons. After the disappearance of her mother (Lena Headey), Clary must join forces with a group of Shadowhunters, who introduce her to a dangerous alternate New York called Downworld, filled with demons, warlocks, vampires, werewolves and other deadly creatures. Based on the worldwide best-selling book series.
WHAT WE THOUGHT
“The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones” feels very derivative. Yes, I know it is adapted from the first in a series of successful novels, but even so, the film feels very similar to the other teen fantasies. It borrows elements from all them but doesn’t know to do with them and ends up veering towards a parody of the genre. This became particularly apparent during the scene where Clary and Jace first kiss – they are in a beautiful greenhouse, a love song kicks in and the sprinklers are turned on – which almost feels like someone parodying “Twilight”. Through into the mix a laughable twist that states that Johann Sebastian Bach was a Shadowhunter who composed classical pieces as a means of fighting demons.
Tightening the script and applying a more liberal hand at editing would have benefited City of Bones, considering how much the young actors flail at their main responsibility of emoting. Collins is passable in the lead role, likable but altogether vanilla. She lacks both the oddly engaging coldness of Kristen Stewart and the acting chops of Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, whose grounded performance in “The Hunger Games” made Katniss somewhat relatable and minimally annoying. Bower is presented with some of the better lines in the movie, but fails to capitalize on it. Veterans Headey and Rhys Myers, who demonstrated skill at playing intense and complex characters in medieval settings on Game of Thrones and The Tudors respectively, are underused and relegated to making the best of their limited screen time and cringe-worthy dialogue.
The Blu-Ray comes with a DVD copy, Digital HD copy and a ton of exclusive special features. The interactive lineage tracker makes great use of the BD-Java. Plus, the featurettes are pretty neat and help people that are new to the books. Then, there’s the music video, deleted scenes and non BD Java enabled featurettes. The DTS-HD 5.1 master audio track is pretty strong for a film like this. Plus, the 1080p transfer is sharp as hell. In the end, I’d recommend a purchase to fans.
RELEASE DATE: 12/03/2013