DVD
'Silent Hill'
Radha Mitchell, 'Silent Hill'
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This is a movie made with genuine grandeur, with a sense of scale and breadth that is never less than gorgeous: The sets are spectacular, the production design is exacting, the costumes and effects lovingly detailed. Watching "Silent Hill" is like spending two hours wandering around within the game.
Which is kind of the problem.
Director Christophe Gans -- the French stylist whose insane action-horror mix "Brotherhood of the Wolf" was a minor cult hit four years ago -- is so in love with the visuals that he spends most of his very long movie watching people stare wonderingly at the world he's created, apparently forgetting that every second that ticks by in the hellish limbo that constitutes "Silent Hill's" ghost-town locale means the evil gains that much more ground, and the lost souls get that much more lost.
Given that the story is about a desperate mother's frantic journey through hell in search of her missing daughter, it seems like there should be a little more urgency to the goings-on.
Radha Mitchell, as the mother, gives a pretty good performance, mixing panic and resolve to convincing effect; also surprisingly strong is "X-Files" veteran Laurie Holden, as a motorcycle cop who responds to the increasingly bizarre situation by standing her ground and shooting back at it. Sean Bean, on the other hand, is more or less superfluous as Mitchell's husband, running around the "real" world trying to uncover the secrets of Silent Hill's past.
Since Mitchell is slowly discovering those for herself, Bean's subplot feels entirely unnecessary ... although if he'd figured out the internal logic of the story for us, all would be forgiven. He doesn't, though. Neither does Mitchell, and neither do the filmmakers. But it sure does look awesome.
Sony's enhanced-widescreen DVD pairs a faithful transfer of the feature with Chris Sikorowski's "Path of Darkness: Making Silent Hill," an hour-long documentary that'll leave you with an intense appreciation for the production's gritty, obsessive detail ... even if you can't help wondering what happened to all the rich themes and subtexts the actors say they loved so much.
STUDIO:Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
RELEASE DATE:August 22nd
RATING:R
PRICE: $28.95
TIME: 125 minutes
DVD EXTRAS:English subtitles; production featurettes.
INTERNET SITE: www.sonypictures.com/movies/silenthill/
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