The Straight to Video Fate of Bobby Z

The Content

I don't like Paul Walker. Nothing against the bloke - I'm sure he's a lovely guy - but as an actor (air quotes), he's terrible. Watching Paul Walker attempt to turn in a performance (air quotes) is like watching droplets of condensation slowly roll down your bathroom window. It's Keanu Reeves without the knowing sense of irony. Yet, for some reason, I normally find the films he stars in pretty damn entertaining. The Fast and the Furious, besides being two hours of mechaphilia porn, is an adrenaline rush that's hard to top, and Into The Blue is the best film about scuba diving starring Jessica Alba ever made.


Actually, looking at IMDb, those are the only two of Paul Walker's films I particularly liked. Still, I think I made my point. Which, in a roundabout way, was that actors don't make films, at least not anymore. It's all about the script, baby. Which brings us to The Death and Life of Bobby Z mercifully for us reviewer types, also known simply as Bobby Z in some territories. Bobby Z not only stars Paul Walker, but it's also got one of the most preposterously far-fetched scripts this side of the last preposterously scripted film. Walker plays (air quotes) Tim Kearney, a low-life street punk and - somehow- also a former marine who is offered an early spring from the can by DEA agent Cruz (Laurence Fishburne). The catch is that he has to portray Bobby Z, a dead drug kingpin with a mild physical resemblance, during a hostage exchange with a set of Mexican bad dudes who, thankfully for the already wobbly script, have never met the real Bobby Z. The payoff for Kearney being that the DEA will let him walk away with Bobby Z's life - the money, the cars and the power. The meet, naturally, goes wrong and Kearney finds himself in the company of a bunch of people who want him dead, neglecting to realise that he would also inherit Bobby Z's enemies. And that, as they say, is that.


It's not that Bobby Z is badly written per se - some of the dialogue will likely get a smirk, and it conforms to the entertaining, meatheaded, action picture mould pretty uniformly - it's just that it's so... utterly daft at times. First Kearney's a dopey twat, then he's a former marine, then he's Bobby Z, then he's the typically selfless yet broody Saturday night action hero. Paul Walker plays about four different characters, yet all of them simple variations of Paul Walker. The action scenes - while I will admit, handled with fair aplomb by director John Herzfeld with only a little editing awkwardness to show him up - are generally far-fetched tosh - Kearney diving onto horseback and making a four-legged escape like he was Roy Rogers incarnate, or speeding around and pulling flashy stunts on a trials bike like he just fell out of the cast of Silver Dream Racer. Larry Fishburne, usually always good value for money, conjures up his inner somnambulist as Cruz, the kinda-southern sounding DEA agent who is meandering around in the plot for no apparent reason, and it's left to young Olivia Wilde as the film's piece of skirt to maintain any kind of screen presence, only managing that by being ridiculously pretty.

The Visuals

2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, Bobby Z is the meat and potatoes of Blu-ray Disc - it does everything right without ever being outstanding. Blacks are a tad disappointing, with that slightly blue-ish hue apparent from the get-go, but the great HD benefit of cramming the frame full of objects and all of them appearing pin-sharp and crisply detailed is present. Now and again the resolution appears a little muddier, particularly in the few instances of stock roll, but it's a fine looking feature none-the-less. Oh, and Laurence Fishburne in 720p - woah!

Viewed on a 32" Samsung at 720p, if that matters at all to you.

The Sound

Dolby TrueHD in both English and, bizarrely, Japanese. Although it's downmixed significantly and chucked out as stereo on my equipment, the fidelity is still quite incredible, topping out via optical around the 1.5Mbps range. Of course, I didn't benefit from the dynamism of several discreet channels - so nothing in the way of bullets pinging over my shoulders - but it sounded great anyway, far, far clearer than a low-compression Dolby Digital 5.1 track and beating off several well-regarded DTS tracks in terms of richness.

The Extras

Only a short 'making of' and a trailer. I know, ridiculous, eh?

The opinion

It should come as no surprise that this is a direct-to-video film. Apparently it tested so poorly that Warner Bros reneged on a deal to stick it in theatres, and Sony was left to pick up the remains and spread them on disc. But yet, it's not a bad film by any means, just trite, silly and vacuous. While it isn't the gold mark standard for brainless actioners, it's good fun if you're in the mood and can forgive that fact that the excellent Keith Carradine makes an early exit, Fishburne is uncharacteristically bland and stomach the laughable notion that someone could think they could fool a woman into thinking they're her ex-boyfriend. Who does Paul Walker think he is, Richard Gere?