Before I jump in, I want to thank Warner Bros for providing us with a copy of this film for our review. My opinions are my own.
I think that some of you may be scratching your heads in regards to the name of this film, but you will have to go all the way back to 1996 to make it... make sense. The original Eraser film starred action film legend... Arnold Schwarzenegger, the classy Vanessa Williams, and the solid cast made for a film that I watched countless times.
Talk about replay value, although back then it was more like rewind value (VHS... woot woot). Anyway, the film revolved around John Kruger (aka the "Eraser", played by Arnold), and Lee Cullen (played by Vanessa). John worked for this division of the U.S. Marshals where they specialized in erasing people by way of faking their deaths. One thing lead to another and the Eraser along with Lee become fugitives... and it just made for one damn good film.
Jumping back to the present, and that's where the name of this film comes from, but it's... Eraser: Reborn. The "Reborn" part of the title gives it a slight leeway in terms of not having to continue the previous story or follow it play by play, but... considering how interesting the previous film was, does the second coming... hold its own? Let's find out.
That could've been rewritten to where Mason & Rina had to beware of the vicious hippo... just as much as the baddies. They were trying to add something interesting to the character, but it wasn't memorable to me. Mason himself, showed the professionalism that he was known for and maintained it well, I like the way he handled his weapons... which the actor poured time into practicing ahead of the film.
Speaking of the baddies, you definitely had the main antagonist front and center and easily identifiable for his dirty deeds, but there was also Talon (played by Nathan Castle), who was presented like he was some sort of big bad warrior... but he fell flat. You didn't know if he wanted to make love to Rina or hit her with a flying elbow off the top rope (RIP Randy Savage). He could've totally been a stronger number 2 in this film that Mason had to take on in hand-to-hand combat to the death or something... but the storyline took a different route. There was fighting and even more shooting, but I just felt like... Talon should have had a bit more skill and screen time to showcase such skill.
For the most part, you can kick back and watch this action flick with ease... even if you aren't on the edge of your seat during the 75 minutes of run time.
Visuals: Visuals are actually pretty good in this film, they captured some beautiful shots in the Capetown location at a variety of angles. The shots were nice and vibrant which included plenty of medium shots, eye level, high angle, over the shoulder, and this beautiful shot they captured of a bird flying toward the camera (seen in the trailer below).
Audio: In terms of the audio, it was clean. No complaints about sound effects and things of that nature, those are on point, but I wasn't a fan of the theme music.
DTS-HD Master Audio: This is the top dog of DTS audio formats, and can be thought of as DTS’s equivalent to Dolby’s TrueHD. Master Audio provides up to 7.1 channels of uncompressed surround-sound audio. - Home Theater For Dummies, 3rd Edition
The film also features Dolby Digital in Francais & Espanol.
Price + Extras: Pricewise, you can get your hands on Eraser: Reborn on Blu-Ray for $24.98, DVD for $19.98, and Digital for $14.99 SRP. These prices are a bit on the higher side in my opinion, but... you can get the Blu-Ray + Digital or DVD at the links here... for a more ideal price range.
Overall, it's an okay film (that included some scenes I enjoyed), I took it for what it was and have watched it 3 times so far. It's Eraser... reimagined on a lower budget (with somewhat charismatic sidekicks added in for good measure).
You also get a special feature titled, "The Warrior and the Witness: Making Eraser: Reborn"... which breaks down the backstory, and other details I actually found interesting. They even mentioned the limited budget (hehehe).
