Crazy Six Blu-ray Review

Crazy Goose Egg

Recently, Rob Lowe starred in a handful of DirecTV commercials. Edit them together and those ads make more coherent sense than the 90 painful minutes of Crazy Six.

Without the box art and included plot description, there’s no making sense of this incoherent slobber. Lowe stars as a junkie gangster, nabbing some plutonium which hardly seems relevant after the first act, and then Ice-T wants Lowe dead. In the background is Mario Van Peebles petting his Chihuahua puppy, and Burt Reynolds as a cowboy hat-wearing cop. They do stuff. They shoot at each other between ‘90s music video interludes.

The opening text, with a font and aggressiveness equivalent to an abrasive anti-drug ad, is the set-up. The Eastern Bloc fell, and so did communism. Mafia gangs moved in. If the violence and drugs of Crazy Six say anything, it’s that communism held things together. Or, that’s a gross misinterpretation because director Albert Pyun’s work is incomprehensible.

Director Albert Pyun misses. Badly.

The same year, Pyun directed Blast. Routine, cliché, and corny, but tolerable. Here in Crazy Six, Pyun aims for a European art film, with glassy color, slow motion, and distracting close-ups on actress Ivana Milicevic’s lips. Pyun misses. Badly. Dialog happens when no one is speaking. Half of it is too mumbled to understand. When characters do acknowledge one another, their purpose and place is lost in direction’s muddiness.

Crazy Six features a number of gun deaths and explicitly uses women as props. It’s a violent place – called Crimeland according to the opening text, because no one thought of a more creative name. Strangely, although club interiors invite sleaze, exteriors show people walking and conducting daily routines. Curious.

Plotting wanders in and out of clarity, from Lowe ditching a cocaine addiction, and helping Milicevic’s own. Van Peebles stands around with his dog. He just watches. Ice-T spends his time looking angry, sending goons to track plutonium. And Burt Reynolds, so above this material even in 1997 post-Cop and a Half, doesn’t explain how a Texan cowboy ended up in the Eastern Bloc. Regardless of why, that’s a regrettable move, because it led to Crazy Six.

Video

Of course something as insufferable as Crazy Six looks outstanding on Blu-ray. From MVD’s Marquee Collection, the high-res, modern scan pulls out a perfect grain structure. Behind it, absolute clarity and sharpness.

Powerful fidelity makes full use of the repetitious close-ups used to tell (not well) this story. Facial definition fills the frame, with texture evident everywhere else too.

Crazy Six employs a wild color scheme, using on-set lighting to draw out contrasting colors. Most shots set themselves in a single hue, usually blues or greens, and occasionally yellow. Each is intensely bright and attractive. When mixed, more so.

Contrast runs on the hotter end, but black levels push excellent, deep shadows. No crush is noted. Depth sticks the landing, pushing dense, heavy imagery.

There is an odd artifact visible at times. It’s the only flaw of note. During certain scenes (Reynolds’ visit to Milicevic in the hospital) there’s a vertical refresh visible. It’s light and difficult to see, but Crazy Six looks as if it’s being projected on a dying CRT screen. Again, this is light, a dig to find something wrong, but the flaw is there.

Audio

Presented in PCM stereo, Crazy Six doesn’t hold up as well here as it does in terms of video. Dialog is outright difficult to hear, partly because the mix tries to push lyrical music and character chatter at the same time. Most lines mumble their way out of actor mouths.

Gunfire does spread around the two available channels, cheaply recorded but nicely separated. There’s no bass support to speak of. Highs maintain their clarity.

Extras

Other than trailers, nothing.

Full disclosure: This Blu-ray was provided to us for review. This has not affected the editorial process. For information on how we handle review material, please visit our about us page to learn more.

The 15 unaltered images below represent the Blu-ray. For an additional 10 Crazy Six screenshots, early access to all screens (plus the 14,000+ already in our library), 50+ exclusive 4K UHD reviews, and more, support us on Patreon.