“Days of Grace” likes playing with time in a way that doesn’t quite work for me. Crime dramas demand a sense of continuity to allow the audience to follow through complicated maneuvers. Javier Bardem’s brother gets kidnapped, a cop tries to do the right thing and the outside world wants to celebrate the World Cup. That’s enough to get most Americans to tune out, but the new release has an amazing score slapped on it. Was that Scarjo singing Summertime? I might take a second to care about this.
The World Cup was an interesting framing device to tell the story of crime in modern Mexico City. What kills me is that it makes everything feel stretched out and a thin story becomes thinner. The acting is strong, but the dramatic tension doesn’t feel like it’s there. The closest we come to a personality is the Boxer hired to watch over Bardem brother at the hideout. Even that is trite and feels cliched to a point.
The DVD and Blu-Ray sports most of the same special features. You get some more featurettes on the Blu-Ray and the Blu touts closed captions as a special feature. The 1080p transfer makes the most out of black levels on the Blu-Ray, but everything feels flat on the DVD. The Dolby track is clear on the DVD, but I could never quite tell the audio track on the Blu-Ray as it seemed lossy. My receiver read it as a PCM mix, but I think that’s because it was trying to decode the right audio mix. In the end, I’d recommend a purchase.
Release Date: OUT NOW!