Review of Urbania

Introduction

Heard any good stories lately? Charlie is trying to cope with the fact that his homosexual partner has left his life, and goes on a tormented personal vendetta to cure his misery by searching for the one responsible for his loss, after locking gaze with the man by chance one night. Charlie takes to the streets at night in a futile and desperate search and meets different characters along the way each with there own story to tell. The flashbacks of his past and the thoughts about all he is hearing from the characters he encounters fuse to create a new reality around him and Charlie becomes disturbed and dejected, pushing him to new lengths.

Video

Although Charlie does his prowling mostly at night there are areas of daylight, but doesn`t shine up the dull coloured suburban style of the movie. The colours aren`t very vibrant or of a high quality transfer, the sight of wear can be seen with popping flecks of black and white now and again too. The street scenes look quite eerie at night as the concentration of dark is very deep in the distance when Charlie looks down the roads and sets the mood well with good use of shadows.

The screen format is presented in 4:3 and has an overall slight soft look to it but on the whole is clean enough and watch able. The apartment locations or sets are dimly lit with adequate furnishings to set the scene, there is a bar and restaurant featured and many shots of either suburban life or the many streets. Various surfaces have graffiti on them giving the look to doors, stairways, buildings and nightlife a run down style to them a bit on the grotty side.

There is some interesting camerawork during the movie and helps with how Charlie`s feelings are presented. The warm and lively party scene where he first met his partner switches in and out from this nightmarish past to a cold looking state of a mess and one of his pale friends looking depressed lives here alone now, this is a good way of visualising what Charlie is seeing. The bartender`s tale is shown visually in the bar itself but further down from where Charlie is sitting and fuses with the present.

In one scene near the end of the movie Charlie can be seen talking to his partner in a room where the whole of the interior contents are whitened including his partner. This is a good way of showing visually, Charlie fighting back the torment, getting back on with life and letting go of the hurt he feels inside, and works pretty well.

Audio

Although the audio is stated on the sleeve as Dolby Digital Stereo the actual speaker arrangement is Dolby Digital 2.1 (according to DVD player audio display and amp display) and features a distinctive rear mono surround channel. As the storyline doesn`t call for much action in the rear speakers apart from ambient sounds most probably, it is actually hard to tell if anything is present at all.

The dialogue is clear throughout and even ambient background noise like traffic or footsteps can be heard too. The music differs slightly throughout the movie, some of it laid back and easy like the type in seedy bars or jazz clubs, other tunes are smooth and mellow, sometimes just eerie string instruments are whining to suit the various night scenes in the story or over certain pieces of narrative.

Little pieces of the music during certain scenes sound familiar to 1930`s Gangster and Mafia jazz styles you sometimes may hear in other movies. There are a couple or so vocal tracks sometimes a little too much in the background to notice though.

Features

The features including the main menu are your basic standard affair here; the main menu has the sleeve cover design spread corner to corner of the screen. The available options are a trailer, scene access with limited chapters and play movie. There is some easy music playing over the silence and static screen. This disk is a region 0 encoded DVD according to the reverse of the sleeve.

Conclusion

The basic plot is a revenge mission for an individual who`s lost his lover, because of the filming style and the fact that the man is gay makes it different to any of the usual plots similar to this. It is interesting to see how Charlie listens to the stories of others and the mixing of his own visions and past flashbacks. The climax of the movie mixes visuals of Charlie talking emotionally to Chris, his partner in a white room, the present day and laying the ghost as well as what Charlie had done as revenge in the scenes leading up to the end.

The movie starts a little confusing with flashes of characters all over the place and narrative over the footage, but by the end everything spans out okay and you do find out what`s happened within Charlie`s story he is telling.