In 1973 Elton John had his best selling album to that time in the double release
Duke (Geraghty) and Amber (Dewan) have dreams of the good life. None of it seems too realistic with their current circumstances. They live in squalor and are constantly terrorized by local thugs. One day Duke happens upon a drug deal gone bad and finds a cache of money. Suddenly those dreams don’t seem so far-fetched, so he adopts the age old legal principle of “finders keepers”. Knowing that he was seen, Duke takes Amber on the run. The man who saw him is a corrupt DEA agent with dreams of his own. Pollen (Slater) is not about to let someone skip out with his jackpot. Most of the film is very uninspired run and chase. Duke’s not the sharpest tool in the box. They buy a bright orange 50’s Chevy to make their getaway in. Did anyone ever tell these guys that hunters wear this color so that they can be seen? They even stop along the way to get married and play high rollers at a
There are several problems in a script with enough holes to comfortably navigate a starship through, Galaxy Class. The most glaring flaw is that there are no good guys here. From what little we know of Duke and Amber, they’re too stupid and selfish to feel any sympathy for. Duke ends up giving us some philosophical mumbo jumbo to rationalize what he’s done, but nobody in the audience is buying. Geraghty and Dewan appear to phone in their performances, and even Slater often appears like he has more important things to be doing. Perhaps they all just suck, or more likely they knew how weak the script was and just stopped caring somewhere along the way. I know I certainly did.
Video
Love Lies Bleeding is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1. This is a direct to video release, so I’m making an assumption that this was the originally intended format. The picture is wholly unremarkable in every way. Colors are drab, and the entire film is soft and muddy. A few of the exterior shots are overlit and simply look washed out. Black levels are mediocre at best. There is some noticeable compression artifact, but honestly the picture’s not good enough to really make a difference here.
Audio
The Dolby Digital 5.1 track might just as well have been a simple stereo presentation. There is almost nothing happening in any of the surround speakers. Lots of dialog and little of anything else. All of this pretty much keeps to center. You can hear all the dialog; too bad no one’s saying anything worth hearing. Occasionally one of the source music songs will punch through with a more pleasing listening experience, but that is rare indeed.
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Special Features
Deleted Scenes: There’s about 17 minutes of deleted material here, but most of it is merely extended scenes we already saw. There’s a slightly altered ending which really doesn’t help anything. One scene might have been cut due to shooting sloppiness as a boom mic cuts in on the frame. Another has some kind of jerky motion problem going on.
Final Thoughts
My advice is to skip the film and instead spin Elton’s
