DVD Reviews

What Doesn’t Kill You – Blu-ray Review

By Frankie Dees May 6, 2009, 11:45 GMT

Brian (Mark Ruffalo) and Paulie (Academy Award® nominee Ethan Hawke, Best Actor In a Supporting Role for Training Day, 2001) are two lifelong friends who grew up like brothers on the gritty streets of south Boston. They started early as street thugs living by the criminal code, doing petty crimes and misdemeanors that grew increasingly more serious. Eventually they fall under the sway of organized crime boss Pat Kelly (Brian ...more

A finely-tuned, nuanced true-life tale about a couple of South Boston small-time hoods, actor-turned-director Brian Goodman gives ‘What Doesn’t Kill You’ a lived-in realism and provides a subtle acting showcase for headliners Ethan Hawke and Mark Ruffalo.

Although marketing sold this as a somewhat poor man’s version of ‘The Departed’, Goodman has more on his mind than just gangster hijinks. This is more a story of a man trying to right wrongs and fight against his criminal instincts to be there for a long-neglected family with Ruffalo adding depth to a father character that’s desperate to escape crime to save his family.

The film starts with one of those ‘inevitable’ prologues, showing a sequence that hints at the disastrous climax just to set the viewer tension wheels in motion. We see an armored-car heist at a shopping center go haywire when an undercover cop throws a wrench into the plans. Paulie (Ethan Hawke) walks out into the open and starts firing away at a cop suggesting early death for all involved.

Scooting back in time, we meet Brian (eventually Mark Ruffalo) and Paulie as childhood friends who survive their poor ‘Southie’ upbringing by resorting to petty crime and falling into the hands of a local gangster Pat (director Brian Goodman) who has them do various ‘chores’.

A couple decades later, Brian and Paulie are still working for Pat and eking out a small-time hood existence by recovering debts. While Paulie is more the firecracker, impulsive and living up the single life, Brian has married Stacy (Amanda Peet) and is raising two sons. When Paulie tires of taking table scraps from Pat, he convinces Brian to stake out some jobs on their own.

This sets up a couple less than perfect jobs that draws Brian away from his family more and more where he finally he succumbs to the addiction of cocaine. Further complications arise when Pat gets wind of Brian and Paulie going out on their own and then a failed job which lands the two in a years-long prison stint.

When Brian finally gets out (with Paulie taking the fall for a prison misdeed and landing him in there six months longer), the terrible string of events seem to be behind him and he’s intent on staying straight despite the complete resistance of the outside world to let that happen.

Unable to secure a reliable job, he has to make a choice when Paulie gets out: return to what he knows best or make the necessary sacrifices for his family.

So while the story starts off as a small-time hood story, it ends up telling the tale of a father trying for redemption. Nothing new, of course, a hood trying to escape a life of crime, but this traditional storytelling is firmly grounded in realism with Goodman (cowriting w/ fellow Bostonian Donnie Wahlberg who also pops up as a cop) having an extreme sense of time and place and able to coax similarly grounded performances from old pros Ruffalo and Hawke.

This Blu-ray release is presented with a 1080p AVC encode and looks fine for what it is. The film sports an intentionally muted palette, however, filmed in the dead of a Boston winter and also has a light layer of grain that’s appropriate to the material so this film will never be a high-def looker but gets the job done. A serviceable Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track is also provided.

Special Features start off with an audio commentary from writer/director/actor Brian Goodman and writer/actor Donnie Wahlberg that is frequently informative and engaging. That this story is based on Goodman’s life, he adds a lot of anecdotes and detail to the story.

‘Deleted and Alternate Scenes’ run about fifteen minutes, ‘What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Strong’ is about twenty minutes and includes the usual behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. Trailers and BD-Live round out the content.

The story/script isn’t terribly new (despite being based on a true story) and Goodman’s debut direction is a bit drab but the film comes recommended on the strength of Ruffalo and Hawke’s performances which add noticeable depth to the material. Blu specs are decent considering the specs and special features are serviceable.