Made

Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn. Two young turks. They made Swingers. They got noticed. They got fame. They went and saved the world in Deep Impact and sliced up holidaymakers while wearing their mother’s dress in the Psycho remake. Then they didn’t do very much. A bit here. A bit there. Maybe they got worried. So Jon wrote a script. Vince said “I’ll produce!� Jon said “I’ll direct!� Audiences said “We’ll watch!� And so it goes.

The result is Made. Bobby (Favreau) is a nice, quiet, dependable guy who loves his stripper girlfriend and her daughter. He wants a better life for them, but his boxing is going nowhere and his job just doesn’t bring in enough money to take them away from all the scum in their life. He’s also loyal to his friend, Ricky (Vaughn), who’s an obnoxious loudmouthed idiot. Bobby’s employer and mob boss, Max (Peter Falk), offers him a gig out of town as muscle on a job. Bobby knows Ricky wants a piece of the mob action, so he gets Ricky in on the act. Bad move. Ricky, of course, now thinks he’s a made man (thus the title) and proceeds to shoot his mouth off everywhere they go, acting the bigshot mob guy, thoroughly f*cking things up, jeopardising the job and maybe even their lives. What was meant to be a simple money drop becomes a saga.

"Now let’s go see the penguins, because the penguins are all over the place and there’s a whole bunch of them, they flap it and they do it."

Together again after their success years back with Swingers, Made works best because Vaughn and Favreau bounce off each other so perfectly. As both actors and characters their scenes together (which is most of them) give the impression they are friends on and off the screen, which – surprise, surprise - they are.

As a foil to Favreau’s (sometimes forced) straightman routine, Vaughn’s fast talking nonsense is designed to utterly grate on the nerves. They want you to get angry and hate his character. He’s rude, obnoxious, arrogant, paranoid, conceited, and most of all, dumb. And he just doesn’t shut up. Ever. Yak, yak, yakkity yak. He. Never. Stops. Thinking he’s doing them a favour whenever he starts flapping his gums, all he ever does is expose his ignorance and either makes you laugh or cringe.

I had a friend just like him. I wanted to smack him in the mouth every time he spoke. Nice guy, though.

And that’s ultimately what lies at the heart of this film. People like my friend or films like Made will be loved or hated for what they are. Made will either get on your nerves and have you wishing a horribly disfiguring death for everyone on screen, or you’ll walk away glad you took the time to get to know it.

This transfer comes in an anamorphically enhanced 1.78:1 aspect ratio (theatrical ratio 1.85:1) and is pleasing to view for a small release low budget film. It’s a clear and clean print, with buckleys in the way of film artefacts and such to note down here. The picture is often dark, which is reflective of the fact they shot a lot with natural lighting, so some scenes look quite dim and shadow heavy and this also shows up some graininess at times. Still, colours are good, with natural looking saturation and the odd punchy looking bit of scenery to punctuate the darkness.

With two audio tracks, being a DD5.1 and DD2.0 stereo mix, the track of choice is obviously the 5.1. It’s not a showcase mix, being fairly restrained in its use of the discrete channels, but this suits the style and content of the film. It does bust out a little for small moments, such as the room filling sound of motorbikes coming from the rears to the front to surround our heroes in chapter 7. There are some subtle stereo effects from time to time, but generally things are front and centre. For a talky script, clarity in the dialogue is probably paramount, and it was mostly clear, with a few moments a little on the indistinct side, these typically being Vaughn’s lines crapping on about something or other yet again. The soundtrack gets a nice run though, stacked with an interesting mix of cool songs by little known bands to accompany the story.

Want a little extra viewing after the film? Good, because this DVD comes with a nice bundle of bonuses. However, before I begin, I found that unfortunately it doesn’t contain the visual audio commentary from the Region 1 counterpart, so that’s a shame. Still, on with what we do have. First up, there are three Featurettes: Getting it Made/The Creative Process/Making the Music of Made. With a combined run time of around 40 minutes, these three featurettes cover most of the making of the film with lots of interview content with Favreau and Vaughn, amongst others, and it’s good to hear what a first time director has to say about the filmmaking process. This extends to the feel of the music, with 15 minutes spent discussing the process of assembling the soundtrack with the various music supervisors.

Not making the final cut, there are five Deleted Scenes, each viewable with or without a commentary from Favreau and Vaughn. Nine clips running 25 minutes make up the Outtakes. These are mainly goofs, fluffs etc, etc. There is some funny stuff in here to watch. One clip shows Vaughn dropping the magic word 20 times in around 30 seconds of dialogue. An effort to be proud of. Take a bow. Then in the >Alternate Scenes we get another nine scenes running over 34 minutes.

The tail end of the package consists of the Theatrical Trailer, letterboxed and in stereo, and a Teaser Trailer in a 16:9 enhanced 1.78:1 AR and stereo. There’s a couple of pages of Cast and Crew Notes including filmographies and five pages of Production Notes.

For all its flaws, it’s a likeable film with good characters, plenty of laughs and a simple storyline running a bladder friendly 90 minutes. Watch Made with Swingers and you’ll have a double feature night that is so money.

On the technical side, the A/V transfer in all regards is easily up to scratch without issues to concern yourself with and lets you get on with just being entertained by the film like all good DVDs should.

The extras are plentiful, with a wealth of material to extend the experience, but unfortunately we're missing a commentary that would have been the icing on the cake and made for a perfect ten.

My final call on this DVD? I have to say that Made is a winner in my books, both as a film and as a DVD package. This one is sure to be out on loan to family and friends for a while, and that’s as good a recommendation as any as far as I’m concerned. Buy it now!