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DVDfever.co.uk – Baseline Blu-ray reviewDom Robinson reviews
Optimum Home EntertainmentBlu-ray: 
DVD:
- Cert:
- Running time: 96 minutes
- Year: 2010
- Cat no: OPTBD1745R0
- Released: July 2010
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 12
- Picture: 1080p High Definition
- Sound: DTS 5.1 HD
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Widescreen: 2.35:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: BD25
- Price: £19.99 (Blu-ray); £15.99 (DVD)
- Extras: Interview with Freddie Connor, Trailers
Director:
- Brendon O’Loughlin
(Baseline, Short: Daniel Ilabaca in Profile)
Producers:
- Rupert Bryan, Freddie Connor, Brendon O’Loughlin and Steffen Wild
Screenplay:
- Freddie Connor, Sheraiah Larcher and Brendon O’Loughlin
Music:
- Nigel Clarke and Michael Csányi-Wills
Cast :
- Danny: Freddie Connor
Jessica: Zoe Tapper
Terry: Jamie Foreman
Paul: Gordon Alexander
Joe: Dexter Fletcher
Sean: Sheraiah Larcher
Rob: Gary Stretch
Jason: Brenden Lovett
Gemma: Kellie Shirley
Karen: Gemma Atkinson
Ricky: Guy Burnet
Baselineis the name of the nightclub run by gangster-type Terry (Jamie Foreman), a man who takes no crap, which tired,low-rent bouncer Danny (Freddie Connor) learns in the heat of the moment outside when a gunman takes a pot-shot at theman and Danny’s quick thinking leads to the guy missing and coming off worse by being knocked hard to the ground.Delighted, Terry takes him under his wing and hires him as a dogsbody – and once you’re in, it’s not easy to get out.
That’s not the end of it though, as Terry wants to know who ordered the hit and his henchman tie him up and extractthe information by inflicting gross amounts of pain with sharp implements and knuckledusters. It’s no surprise to learnthere’s a rival gang on the horizon, and in fact in this script there are few surprises at all.
Club frequenter Jessica (Zoe Tapper, right) hits on Danny, one night while he’s on the door, and they end up an item;Gordon Alexander plays Danny’s club colleague Paul and, like Danny, also has dreams of opening his own place oneday, ex-Eastender Kellie Shirley plays Paul’s long-suffering girlfriend and ex-Hollyoaks actress Gemma Atkinsonworks in Tesco and her role will become apparent as the film progresses.
Baseline is a very violent film and that’s its strength. While it keeps you entertained for the 90 minutes, it’sfailing is that it’s fairly bog-standard stuff and full of cliches – a friendship is tested, loving relationships don’talways work out, Jamie Foreman plays a Cockney heavy (he’s about due for a long spell in Eastenders), and one ofthe weak links in the chain is Freddie Connor himself. He co-wrote the lacking script and he couldn’t really act hisway out of a paper bag. In fact, he sleepwalks through his role like Clive Owen often does, except that Owen has a certaincharm to his performances.
On the plus side, Gordon Alexander excels as a man who starts off with dreams but ends up in more deep shit thananyone has a right to; and for a feature directorial debut, Brendon O’Loughlin clearly knows what he’s doing withthe framing of the scenes and some subtle use of slo-mo to build tension, even if you know what’s coming anyway – it justmakes the scene more tense! Great stuff!
Before the film ended I looked on IMDB and saw there’s another film, The Grind, with the majority of the main castand I was thinking they might all just have got together for another new, and different, film, but it appears the scriptfor Baseline is adapted from The Grind, so is it just the same film? There doesn’t seem a lot of pointto that.
Presented in the original 2.35:1 anamorphic theatrical ratio, the picture is sharp and detailed with no problems whatsoever.For the record, I’m watching on a Panasonic 37″ Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player.
On an aside, there’s a still shot of some flats 50 minutes into the film, which is actually a 16:9 windowboxed image.Looks a bit odd – I wonder how that happened?
Audio-wise, you get a 5.1 DTS soundtrack which is faultless when it comes to getting across the gunshots, punch-ups,disco music and dialogue.
The extras are in small number. There’s an interview with Freddie Connor (5:10), although it comes across very flat;and then a ‘Neon’ trailer (2:16) followed by a ‘White’ trailer (2:16), both of which have the same content but differentcoloured text during them. Oddly, both trailers have an anamorphic squeeze on the picture which looks very odd and isquite unnecessary. Don’t watch them before you see the film – it’s worth a look as it is – since they just giveeverything away.
The menu mixes clips of the film with a short piece of the incidental music.There are no subtitles at all, which is incredibly annoying and lazy,and the Chaptering is, again for Optimum, a typical embarrassment with just 12 over the 92-minute running time.Also, there’s also trailers that you can’t skip past or pause! This is NOT the age of the rental video, Optimum, and thisis VERY annoying! STOP IT!
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.