DVD REVIEW

Five Days

HBO Home Video || Not Rated || March 11, 2008

Synopsis

A mother, Leanne, vanishes into thin air. Her children, abandoned in her car, also go missing. As police search for clues over three gut-wrenching months, the Leanne's husband and family learn that nobody's quite what they seem. Everyone is a suspect. In the end, five days prove critical in solving the case in this five-part, five-hour thriller.


Critique

Five Days is a compelling look at lives ruined in the wake of tragedy.  Things happen right away, so we don’t know any more about the victims than the police do; everything comes to us after the fact, which doesn’t make the information any less murky.

Things turn quickly in the beginning.  The two children are recovered, while Leanne remains missing.  It’s nice to have the children back, but it also feel like something of a cheat; the reality has been watered down.  They are also returned so quickly we barely have to look for them.

The police should the most interesting characters here.  Careers are made and broken in cases like these; they’re on the line one way or the other.  There are leads, hunches, suspects, lines of evidence that may lead anywhere, so where do you start?  The wrong road, which is so easy to take, costs them time they do not have.  Time ends up being the biggest enemy.

Where does a case like this end?  When every line of evidence has been played out, when every witness and suspect has been played as much as it can be, when you still have nothing at the end of all of that, where does it end?  When do you call it a day?  The lead investigator calls it a career before anything is solved; the case has outlasted her.

After 28 days – a full four weeks – they find a body, only to realize that it is not Leanne.  So which is harder, knowing it is not her, and she could still be out there, or finding out that, yes, she is dead.  “It’s hope I can’t bear,” says Matt, so maybe not knowing is the worst torture of all.

The last episode, day seventy-nine, feels like an aftermath.  Six more weeks have passed since the last day we covered, and we’re just kind of catching up.  The case is solved here, which again feels like a cheat.  As a mystery, we want to find out whodunit, but as an audience that sees these kinds of stories on the news all too often, we know that all too often these cases go unsolved.


Video

Five Days is presented in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio.  The transfer is sharp, about as crisp as a TV show can be expected to look.  The colors are straightforward and the overall presentation is competent and well done.


Audio

This DVD set is presented in Dolby Digital sound.  Like the video, this is a solid, competent presentation that gets the job done without standing out.  The levels are sharply presented.


Special Features

Behind the Mystery of Five Days: writer Gwyneth Hughes talks about the process of crafting a mystery, the characters, and how everything sprang from past writings and real news stories.  This is an interesting chat.


Final Thoughts

Five Days is a solidly written mystery with a bittersweet ending.  The writing and performances are solid, but this probably doesn’t need to be as long as it is.  The bonus piece we have is interesting, but there is plenty of room for some commentary tracks.

VERDICT: RECOMMENDED

 

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Review posted on Jan 5, 2009 | Share this article | Top of Page

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