War photographer Mark Walsh (Colin Farrell) returns home to his girlfriend Elena Morales (Paz Vega) from covering the events in Kurdistan without his friend and colleague David (Jamie Sives) openly showing signs of post-traumatic stress. The missing man’s wife Diane (Kelly Reilly) believes Mark is the key to unlocking what happened to her husband, Elena’s psychoanalyst grandfather Joaquín (Christopher Lee) attempting to unlock the secrets buried somewhere within the man’s brain.

CRITIQUE

On the good news front, I’m not quite sure Colin Farrell has ever given a more resonant, deeply felt performance than the one he delivers in director Danis Tanovic’s (No Man’s Land) Triage. He mines some magnificent depths here, and even when the screenplay (written by the director and based on the book by Scott Anderson) turns laughable and goes our of its way to let him down the actor still finds away to rise above it all to extraordinary heights.

Additionally, the depiction of events on the ground in Kurdistan itself is beyond harrowing. No surprise to anyone who has seen his earlier efforts, Tanovic is an absolute master at showcasing the effects of war upon soldier and civilian alike. You can now add journalist to that mix, the scenes of Mark trying his best to maintain his composure and get the perfect shot even though what he’s witnessing is bit by devastating bit decimating his soul almost beyond compare.

But the film falters when it gets the photojournalist home, and as good as the supporting players are (Vega and Lee in particular) the twists and turns taking place just felt way too cheap and overly melodramatic as far as I was concerned. The movie consistently cheapens Mark’s journey, the ultimate revelations regarding David nowhere near as poignant or as powerful as they could have been had Tanovic kept things a bit more simple and not been so obsessed with trying to trick the audience. The slight of hand involving his mental state is pointlessly duplicitous, and by the time the film was over I was more annoyed by what I’d just been forced to witness than I was anything remotely else.

Pity, because Triage is a story deserving of being told and handled with a bit more care I think this could have been something close to mesmerizing. Instead, even with Farrell’s brilliance it becomes perilously close to nothing less than a serious waste of talent and time, and as excited as I originally was to get a look at it I was even more letdown by the banal mediocrity of the climactic scenes.

THE VIDEO

Triage is presented on a 25GB disc with a 2.35:1 transfer (the case says it is in 1.78:1; that is a misprint). The film is muddy and blanched by design, so the almost dirty sheen to the visuals is complete on purpose. By and large this is a solid transfer although there is some noticeable digital noise during the desert sequences. The urban scenes and pretty much all of the interiors look fairly stunning.

THE AUDIO

The film is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 with English subtitles. By far this is the disc’s strongest attribute, this audio transfer one of the best I’ve heard all year. Flat-out incredible, especially during the Kurdistan sequences.

THE EXTRAS

The Blu-ray’s extras include:

·    Making-of-“Triage” featurette

·    Interviews with Colin Farrell, Paz Vega, Christopher Lee and Danis Tanovic

·    Behind-the-Scenes footage

The interviews are star attraction here, the other two extras not particularly interesting. There are also trailers for three other NEM releases including the kind of great Four Boxes which I saw back during the 2009 Seattle International Film Festival and was a bit surprised never got any sort of theatrical distribution.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Triage offers up an excellent performance from Colin Farrell thanks ranks as one of his absolute best. Unfortunately, the rest of director Danis Tanovic’s picture is a muddled, melodramatic mess and as such I just can’t bring myself to give it a recommendation, maybe as a rental but that's pushing it.