Road to Perdition (BLU RAY)

Directed by Sam Mendes
Written by David Self
Stars: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Daniel Craig, Jude Law

Director Sam Mendes followed up his grotesquely overrated Oscar winner American Beauty with this under appreciated adaptation of Max Allan Collins graphic novel, itself a loose reinvention of the classic Japanese manga Lone Wolf & Cub.
Set in the 1930’s, it tells the story of a loyal mob enforcer, Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks), whose young son stows away in his father’s car, leading to him witnessing a mob slaying carried out by Connor Rooney (Daniel Craig), the murderous son of Sullivan’s life-long employer and father figure John Rooney (Paul Newman). Connor attempts to tie-up loose ends and ensure that the young witness can’t talk, so he brutally slays Sullivan’s wife and other young son in a botched home invasion. Michael Snr and Jnr escape with their lives and hit the road, pursued by a haunted hired killer, Harlen Maguire (Jude Law). Largely dismissed upon its release, Road to Perdition boasts a standout cast (including Newman in his final screen performance) firing on all cylinders as well as stunning Cinematography by Conrad L. Hall, who died shortly after production and nabbed a posthumous Oscar for his work on this film. One of Mendes better efforts; it’s a violent and often time’s lyrical and elegiac take on the mobster genre that rewards the repeat viewer. Extras wise there’s a commentary by Mendes, deleted scenes, a featurette on Conrad Hall and the making of the film.

Underbelly: Season One (BLU RAY)

While its TV run scored massive ratings, Underbelly’s appeal to the Australian television audience proved that the public will happily tune in for a half-arsed crime soap opera because there’s little else in the way of Oz-centric crime drama on offer. Underbelly’s glorification of the Melbourne gangland wars of the 1990’s coupled with an exploitative tits‘n’ass style is salacious and glossy enough to ensure that the casual viewer will find themselves guiltily hooked. It focuses primarily on the ‘Carlton Crew’ crime syndicate consisting of a variety of drug dealers and stand-over men such as Alphonse Gangitano (Vince Colosimo), Mick Gatto (Simon Westaway), loanshark Mario Condello (Martin Sacks), retired bank robber Graham Kinniburgh (Gerard Kennedy), drug-dealing siblings Jason and Mark Moran (Les Hill and Callan Mulvey) and Jason Moran's dim driver, Carl Williams (Gyton Grantley). Narrated in hindsight by police officers Steve Owen (Rodger Corser) and Jacqui James (Caroline Craig), members of Task Force Purana (which investigated the Melbourne gangland killings in the 2000’s), the plot is cobbled together from police records and often times, wholesale fiction. While the show runners had a golden opportunity to create something genuinely compelling and powerful, they ultimately go for the lowest common denominator, fiddling the facts only to churn out badly written and overacted, glossed-up crime-porn. Extras include extended uncut scenes, a behind the scenes featurette and a min-doco ‘Carl Williams: Day of Reckoning’.