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Twelve
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Ethan Stevenson (25th February 2011). |
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The Film
 “My Dad says that if I don’t get into Harvard, I HAVE to go to Dartmouth.” Ah, the trials and tribulations of the rich and famous. I wish my only worry when I was a high school senior was what über-expensive college I got into. (They’re still top schools either way; and Dad is paying your tuition no matter what, so I ask: how exactly is that really a problem?) The above is just one of many idiotic, non-conflicts for the characters for Joel Schumacher’s latest crapterpiece, “Twelve” – a film so pointless that conjuring up the following critique is going to be a chore. I really don’t need to say much in order to express the terribleness that is “Twelve.” I can do it with two points. First, the man who put nipples on the batsuit directed this movie; that alone should be enough (yeah, I went for the easy blow; Schumacher, post-“Falling Down” (1993) sucks so much that I don’t care to get more creative). But, strike two would be that “Twelve” stars the unbelievably atrocious Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson in an above-the-title role. “Fiddy” is such a bad actor that he can’t even convincingly play Lionel, the film’s lecherous, murdering drug dealer antagonist who gets shot repeatedly in the climax (a role that requires less acting on the part of the rapper, and more mere existing). If those two things aren’t enough to make you never want to put “Twelve” in your Blu-ray player, I don’t know what to say. Oh, I know… I’ll talk about the truly awful plot. “Twelve”, based on a book of the same name by Nick McDonnell, tells the story of a seventeen-year-old drug dealer from New York City’s Upper East Side named White Mike (yes, that really is his name), played by the vapid Chace Crawford. Mike, still reeling from the death of his mother who was taken by cancer over a year ago, deals to his “friends” – rich white children with mommy and daddy issues, who escape into a world of sex, drugs and violence to make the pain go away – so that he can pay for school. Mike has morals (ha!); he doesn’t dabble in his own stash, doesn’t deal anything harder than marijuana, and sure as hell wants nothing to do with the latest “designer” drug that all his clients are asking for, a potent mixture of cocaine and ecstasy called Twelve. From that basic framework, the film branches off into a series of interconnected vignettes, each of which is too underdeveloped to really matter. One of the main subplots involves Mike’s junkie cousin Charlie (Jeremy Allen White), who’s killed in a scuffle with Lionel. Mike spends the movie looking for Charlie (and later, Charlie’s killer) – a story thread that really lacks any sort of… anything; the matter-of-fact way in which the character’s death is shot and cut distills every bit of mystery and intrigue that could have surround it. The death of an innocent bystander also killed in the same murder subplot eventually involves Hunter (Phillip Ettinger), a friend of Charlie and Mike who has Daddy issues of his own and a bit of a self destructive streak, and two hot-shot detectives who bring him in for questioning. Unfortunately, this plot literally goes NOWHERE, even though at least fifteen minutes is devoted to it throughout the film. The three other main vignettes – of which there a literally half a dozen other off-shoots that I won’t go into – focus on various other friends and customers of Mike. There’s Jessica (Emily Meade), a poor smart girl neglected by her floozy mother (Ellen Barkin). She gets caught up in drugs, graduating from pot to the highly addictive Twelve in less than a weeks time (most of the film takes place over the course of Spring Break). Then there’s Chris (Rory Culkin), who has no real friends of his own and constantly throws parties while his parents are away on vacation to make up for this fact. Chris’ world is upended when his roid-rage-y brother (Billy Magnussen) decides to run away from Military School and come home uninvited. And finally, there’s sweet Molly Norton (Emma Roberts), White Mike’s sort-of girlfriend from the wrong side of the tracks who has no idea that Mike deals drugs for a living. Performances, almost universally across the cast, are questionable at best. Crawford is the male equivalent of Megan Fox (supposedly attractive, but unmistakably untalented), Roberts seems horribly wasted and (like so much in the film) comes across as inane, and Rory Culkin slums it in a role that never had a chance. Even Kiefer Sutherland, whose charged with overwrought narration duties, voicing White Mike’s endless internal monologues, disappoints by just plodding along as though he’s only half awake. Sutherland must have a contract with Schumacher (who made Kiefer a star when he cast him as David in the “The Lost Boys” (1987) and positioned him as an adult lead with the trippy-but-cool “Flatliners” (1990)) to appear in any movie that the director asks him to. Sutherland seems bored with his job here – which is sort of awkwardly hilarious in the sense that an omnipotent narrator dislikes what happens on screen as much as the viewer does, to the point that he just doesn’t care anymore – so I can’t see any reason other than some sort of contract (legal or social) for Jack Bauer’s presence. Now, I haven’t read the book so I don’t know if it’s the source material that’s to blame, or simply the trite execution in adapting the novel to screen, but I have to assume it’s the latter. Many of the flaws with “Twelve” – mainly, the bloated, empty-headed narrative found in Jordan Melamed’s screenplay – likely don’t present themselves in novel form. Novels are supposed to be long, pointless, multi-threaded and endless. They’re long-form narratives that have no particular limit to the number of characters or listless subplots that can be explored within. Films aren’t limitless; in fact they’re quite limited. Cramming near a dozen main characters, with their interconnected mini-stories (each with their own sub-subplot), into 93 minutes is just a recipe for disaster. The plot is needlessly labyrinthine, the acting mostly poor, and the execution of the presumably poorly adapted screenplay is clumsy – made worse by Schumacher’s insistence of forcing some oddly stylized character soliloquy’s into the mix – but that’s not the worst part of this whole thing. Tagged onto the ending is some sort of phony thinks-it-profound baloney that rings wholly false because, until that point, every single character (save for the truly pathetic Chris and underdeveloped Molly) is an unlikable bastard or bitch. I case you didn’t get it yet “Twelve” is miserable. Just don’t bother.
Video
The 1080p 24/fps high definition AVC MPEG-4 transfer frames “Twelve” in its original 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio. The single layered BD-25 release has an advertised average bitrate of 20 Mbps. Overall, the transfer seems to replicate Steven Friedberg’s stylized photography, without much issue. I detected no instances of artificial sharpening or unintended digital noise reduction. Sourced from an all-digital workflow via the RED One camera, Schumacher’s latest looks, frankly, pretty good. The transfer isn’t perfect – I detected a few scenes suffering from mild black crush, a series of close ups that just didn’t reveal the expected level of detail, and some faint banding in a couple of shots – but this is a strong, full image. Shot on location in New York, “Twelve” has its share of detail-rich skyline shots intercut with scenes of characters on daytime strolls through Central Park. More than half the film takes place in the Upper East Side, where the nighttime shenanigans of rich white people are lit by faint amber street lamps and their fantastic parties, under the light of grand chandeliers. Contrast is ample and the image has nice depth. Colors are on the muted side, and far from showy. Aside from a few clipped, black-on-white stylized sequences, this is a naturalistic, straightforward transfer.
Audio
Outfit with an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit) mix, “Twelve” features a soundtrack that is simple but effective, clear, well prioritized, and generally pretty pleasing to the ear. Like the video this is a technically proficient presentation that has few – if any – real flaws. The audio is far more conventional than the sometimes-stylized visuals, with a strong focus on dialog and music (anchored by a largely forgettable score from composer Harry Gregson-Williams) that bleeds naturally to the rears. The climactic party sequence delivers with gunshots, chaos, and screaming crowd chatter. Although not quite reference, this is still a good mix. Subtitles are available in English for the hearing impaired, Spanish, and French.
Extras
Aside from a series of unrelated bonus trailers, there are no extras on this disc. Curiously, a trailer for “Twelve” hasn’t been included; Fox has also authored the Blu-ray with their standard bookmarking and resume play functions. Before the menu there are a handful of skippable Bonus trailers (all in 1080p) for “Street Kings 2” (30 seconds), “Machete” (1 minute 55 seconds), “Wild Target” (2 minutes 28 seconds), “Unstoppable” (2 minutes 27 seconds) and “Cyrus” (2 minutes 19 seconds) – all of which will be available on DVD and Blu-ray on various dates. In the extras sub-menu there’s a tab called “Sneak Peeks” which includes bonus trailers (also all in 1080p) for “Mirrors 2” (1 minutes 27 seconds), “Predators” (2 minutes 19 seconds), “Vampires Suck” (1 minute 50 seconds), “The A-Team” (2 minutes 24 seconds) and “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” (2 minutes 26 seconds).
Packaging
“Twelve” is the rare single layer (BD-25) disc from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. It comes packaged in an Elite eco-box and is locked to region A.
Overall
As if the names Joel Schumacher and “50 Cent” weren’t enough to keep you away from “Twelve”, know that the plot is convoluted, superficial and pointless, the characters are unlikable and the acting is pretty terrible. Fox’s blu-ray has nice A/V and no extras, but this is a skippable mess if there ever was one.
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