HTF REVIEW: American Pastime (1 Viewer)

[Ken_McAlinden]

American Pastime

Directed By: Desmond Nakano

Starring: Gary Cole, Aaron Yoo, Leonardo Nam, Masatoshi Nakamura, Judy Ongg, Sarah Drew, John Gries

Studio: Warner Brothers Year: 2007 Rated: Unrated Film Length: 106 minutes Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Subtitles: English, English SDH, French Release Date: May 22, 2007

The Film

"American Pastime" tells the story of a group of Japanese Americans in the Topaz internment camp in the Utah desert during World War II. The main protagonist is Lyle Nomura (Yoo), the youngest son of his family who is forced to give up a baseball scholarship to San Francisco State University when he is relocated with his older brother, Lane (Nam), his father, Kaz (Nakamura), and his mother, Emi (Ongg). The Nomura's and their fellow detainees work to maintain their dignity in the face of the daily humiliation of camp life. The relationship between the guards and local townspeople, many of whom are parents of soldiers, is uneasy. Lyle finds an outlet playing jazz, occasionally gets into trouble through his association with the camp's resident "scrounger", Nori Morita (Sakai), and initiates a secret romantic relationship with young music teacher Katie (Drew), who is also the daughter of one of the camp guards, Billy Burrell (Gary Cole). Lane joins the military as a way to both serve his country and escape the camp, and serves in Europe with the highly decorated Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Lyle initially resists his fathers wishes for him to participate in a camp baseball league, but when a chance for a scholarship arises that would allow him to leave the camp, he decides to play. The film culminates in a baseball game between the local semi-pro team, led by camp guard and previous minor league prospect Billy, and a team representing the Topaz camp detainees, bringing many of the complex feelings between the camp residents and the locals to a head.

Desmond Nakano's film does a wonderful job of recreating the Topaz Internment Camp. The sets were reportedly created from the blueprints from the actual camp on location in Utah. The bleakness of the surrounding desert is further emphasized by the use of filters to achieve a desaturated color pallette. There are moments of the film where montages of actual camp footage are shown which illustrate the remarkable verisimilitude achieved by the production design.

The film itself takes a kitchen sink approach in terms of piling on the subplots, which should be evident by the length of my synopsis two paragraphs ago. I did not even mention the one about camp guard Billy hoping that a Yankee scout will come to the game to give him one more shot at the big leagues. One cannot help but think that they have seen all of these plots played out more effectively in other films. While the film wisely avoids having its characters wax preachy via dialog, the scripted characterizations are still occasionally a bit broad. It seems a bit excessive to make Lyle a talented baseball and jazz saxophone player. One gets the feeling that the filmmakers were disappointed that they could not make him a Civil War veteran so as to fully represent the three pillars of Ken Burns Americana.

That being said, the novel setting and the generally excellent performances from charming newcomers (Yoo, Nam, Drew), seasoned character actors (Cole, Sakai, Nakamura, Ries), and even a frumpy ex-Major Leaguer (John Kruk plays the casually racist PA announcer at the ball park), helps to smooth over the cliches enough to make the film watchable.

The film is unrated. It contains a good deal of profanity, which likely would have garnered it a PG rating if it had been distributed theatrically in the USA.

The Video

The film's desaturated color palette is well-represented on this DVD, which frames the image so as to completely fill the 16:9 enhanced frame. There is a bit more grain than is normally seen in modern big-budget productions, but the transfer and compression look pleasingly film-like. Compression artifacts are not distracting from a reasonable viewing distance. There are some instances of very mild ringing along high contrast edges, but they are not pervasive.

The Audio

The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is normally conservative, but occasionally makes use of the surrounds and LFE for some pleasing immersive effects. Fidelity of all elements of the mix is very good.

The Extras

Extras include a featurette called "Go for Broke: Behind American Pastime". It is a standard EPK-style featurette with most cast and crew interviews taking place on the set. However, it is more interesting than most other such material since it includes contemporary comments from surviving internment camp detainees and veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team whose "Go for Broke" motto gives the featurette its name.

The disc also includes a promotional trailer for the film's DVD release since there was likely no theatrical trailer. The film played at a number of festivals, but was never distributed widely in theaters.

Packaging

The disc comes in a standard Amaray-type keep-case, with no inserts. The disc menu eschews a "special features" page by having the links for the featurette and the trailer on the main page. Unfortunately, it also eschews a chapter menu, although the film is encoded with 11 chapters that you can skip through with your remote.

Summary

"American Pastime" illustrates an under-documented aspect of American history via an accessible narrative. The film plays like an interesting variation on POW genre films, but the filmmakers erred in piling on too many sports, family drama, and forbidden romance cliches as well. The DVD represents the film well, with grainy, but well-rendered video and a modest but effective sound mix. It is not a home run, but I will say it is at least an RBI single.

Regards,