The Badge

Introduction

Night in LeSalle parish, Louisiana. A shot rings out, a stork flies off and a scantily dressed woman runs through the forest and onto a road into the path of a truck which then swerves to avoid her, jack-knives and ends up on its side in the levee. The following morning, Sherriff Darl Hardwick (Billy Bob Thornton) is called to the scene where the woman is nowhere to be found and, as the truck driver had no insurance and, as it`s election time, Darl decides to curry favour with the local populace by giving away the shoes that the truck was transporting.

When the unidentified body of a woman is found near the scene with no ID, she is taken to the morgue where the examination reveals that she was killed by a bullet and that `she` is a `he`. His/her wife subsequently appears because she received a phone call the previous day from him/her at LeSalle and hadn`t heard from him/her since.

This then becomes a `whodunnit` set against the backdrop of politics in a backwater parish in Louisiana.

Video

A nicely presented 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, completely ruined by `PROPERTY OF DNC ENTERTAINMENT` as a forced subtitle emblazoned across the bottom of the screen for the entire movie. I`ve reviewed discs that had `Property of...` burnt into the image and appearing at regular intervals throughout the film, but never through the whole picture and never as a subtitle. If I wanted to copy the film, I`d just remove the subtitle anyway, so an odd and annoying choice - nil points!

Audio

The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is horribly muddy and I could barely understand a word that was said until about halfway through when everything became a lot clearer. I don`t know whether it was me adjusting to the soundtrack or a technological improvement, but an unclear soundtrack and a Louisiana drawl do not combine well. This disc had no subtitles aside from the aforementioned `Property of...` one - maybe the retail disc will.

Features

Theatrical trailer

More from DNC:
- .45
- Simon Says
- The Dog Problem
- Home of the Brave

Unusually, there is no Chapter Selection option, with chapter dividers every 10 minutes through the film.

Conclusion

One the face of it, any film with Billy Bob Thornton, Patricia Arquette and Thomas Hayden Church should be worth watching, especially if the story concerns the murder of a transsexual and some grubby southern politicians. For a short time, it is, but then writer/director Robby Henson introduces so many plot strands that the whole thing becomes bogged down and completely unsure of which direction to take. This may be down to Henson, or it could be something to do with the eleven (eleven!) executive producers and numerous production companies involved.

If the film stuck to being a simple whodunnit, it might have worked, but there`s so much going on that it`s just an unnecessarily over-complicated mess, with a relatively simple and unsatisfactory denouement. To make matters worse, Henson occasionally speeds up or slows down the film and even tampers with the colour - cutting to a washed-out blue effect then back.
I was immediately put in a bad mood when the film started with `PROPERTY OF DNC ENTERTAINMENT` at the bottom of the screen and when it didn`t go away, my mood only deepened. Had the film been any good, I could have forgiven this irritation, but, sadly, it wasn`t.