DVD Reviews

Kalifornia - Blu-ray Review

By Dana Rae Aug 17, 2010, 17:03 GMT

Excitement, adventure and unimaginable terror await on the road to Kalifornia. "Brad Pitt is outstanding" (Rolling Stone) and "Juliette Lewis is utterly, heartbreakingly convincing" (Boxoffice) in this chilling psychological thriller co-starring David Duchovny and Michelle Forbes. When urban intellectuals Brian (Duchovny) and Carrie (Forbes) set out on a cross-country trip to research a book about serial killers, they share the ride with a couple they barely know. Early Grayce (Pitt) ...more

With its first release to the Blu-ray format, 1993’s Kalifornia will make you remember why we fell in love with Brad Pitt in A River Runs Through It and then fell out of love with him with this movie. But you will also realize that this is one of Pitt’s grittiest and best performances, as he plays the dirty, psychopathic Early Grayce.

Pitt had yet to break big, and I applaud his taking on this role since it is so far away from the pretty-boy heartthrob status that has tagged his career. He is a great actor and this early film shows his talent.

At times, Pitt is almost unrecognizable as Early thanks to his shabby beard, dirty hair, and crude violence. It is a powerful and scary performance for an actor who got his big break by taking his shirt off in Thelma & Louise.

You cannot think of the character of Early without Juliette Lewis’ Adele saying, “Earlllly” in her whiny Southern accent. The two together, Early and Adele, are a cinematic force that makes you want to wince and applaud at the same time.

Wince because the characters are just so gruesomely ignorant and so steadfastly what I would term ‘trash’. Add Early’s talent for killing and you have something you can’t look away from.

Applaud because the performances are dead on. Both Lewis and Pitt give us a look into another world, of characters we would not want to meet or have to contend with.

The other two characters, Carrie and Brian (played by Michelle Forbes and David Duchovny), sponsor a road trip and are looking traveling companions to pay for the expenses.

Ironically, the road trip’s purpose to visit famous serial killer sites, as Brian is a writer working on a book of famous serial killers. His girlfriend Carrie is an avant-garde photographer with an arsenal of photographs she has taken. She is providing the photos to Brian’s words as they stop by the murder sites on Brian’s list.

Carrie also enjoys taking provocative photos and Adele’s naivety comes through full-force as she looks at the pictures. Throughout the movie, Carrie smokes her cigarette and sports her severe hair cut, and Adele’s wide-eyed innocence is truly heartbreaking.

In one such scene, Adele tells Carrie about the time when she was thirteen and three boys raped her in the back of a truck, ending with her justification for being with Early (he would never let something like that happen to her again), and then asking Carrie brightly to cut her hair.

Forbes’ performance is a bit under-stated, but her handling of Adele is masterful. When Adele tells Carrie that Early only hits her if she is bad or deserves it (or something of that ilk), the audience can see the modern woman vying with the mentor she has become to Adele on Forbes’ face.

Kalifornia works on many levels, and it is a tribute to the actors involved that it might not have worked without such talent. At its simplest, the film is simply a road trip. To watch it now, it is filled with 90s clichés from Carrie and her artistic endeavors to how she dresses to the modernistic themes of Carrie and Brian.

Somehow all of the actors involved manage to transcend the decade it was filmed in and it truly becomes a psychological thriller as we see Early’s true character revealed: that of a killer with no conscience.

Carrie and Brian are caught up in the mayhem as Early slowly unravels. He kills a man at a gasoline station for a few dollars in gas money in a gruesome bathroom scene and then calmly tells Brian “You don’t want to go in there,” and handing him the money for his part in the trip.

The climax comes when Adele realizes that Early is really a bed person and confronts him, and we see the change in Early’s face. Adele no longer matters to him, if she ever did. I felt true fear at that moment, watching Pitt’s face change.

Since this is the first time on Blu-ray, I was surprised that it is such a bare-bones release. Also, it should be noted that there are two releases involved here: the theatrical release and the unrated, however, when buying the DVD + Blu-ray combo, the theatrical can only be viewed on the DVD. Which means only the unrated version was upgraded to high definition.

The picture looks amazing in the 1080p format. Early actually looks greasier than I remembered. The format also helps pick up little things Pitt did with the character to make him even more of a loser.

Although the film feels a bit dated and isn’t a masterpiece to begin with, Kalifornia is worth watching thanks to Pitts dark turn as Early. The actor has rarely played a villain or a character that is such trash. His violence is shocking (and a tad more gruesome on the Blu-ray format), but makes the movie worth watching. It is well-worth picking and a classic addition to any movie collection.