Observe and Report is one of the ballsiest wide releases in recent memory. Verging-on-psychopathic obsessive Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen) is a mall security guard with delusions of heroism. I didn't quite go nuts for it back in March, preferring director Jody Hill's The Foot Fist Way and TV show Eastbound and Down to it, but I love what it has to say about modern perceptions of heroism. People espouse the belief that soldiers are heroes by job description, but in come reports of convicted perpetrators of rape and civilian murder in Iraq. The doesn't make all soldiers criminals in any respect, but it certainly calls into question blanket unqualified praise.
Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe make hundreds upon hundreds of millions by portraying a world where there's black and white good and evil, but nothing resembling the nuanced world we actually live in, where the ideas that make us enemies of one another can be invisible to the naked eye. Do those dollars rolling in translate into American Idol-style votes for the "Fuck Yeah" America that people wish we could be again? I can imagine Ronnie going to see Transformers 2 and screaming "Fuck yeah!" as Optimus Prime rips heads off of Decepticons, wishing he could do that to "I-rackis" like Aziz Ansari's lotion hawker in O&R. It's going to have a healthy life on home video even though it didn't explode at the box office. Here's my review from SXSW '09.
In what I consider a significant symbolic move, WB has opted to not include supplemental features on the DVD version of Observe and Report, putting them all on the Blu-ray. This, to me, indicates one of the biggest of the majors making a statement on where things are moving. The Gag Reel [12:14] is lifted by a section of Danny McBride toward the end, and it's partly duplicated in Seth Rogen & Anna Faris: Unscripted [7:38]. There's just shy of half an hour of Deleted Scenes/Alternate Lines [27:09], many of which are riffs that seem like they just didn't gel or hum along as well as the rest of the film. Basically Training [6:48] is a short piece about Rogen going from funnyman to action man, and the Forest Ridge Mall Security Recruitment Video [2:58] momentarily breaks the fourth wall by using footage of Rogen from the BT featurette out of costume and character. There's a Digital Copy included, and the Picture-in-Picture Commentary with director Hill and actors Rogen and Faris opens with the three of them questioning why anyone would want to watch them watching their own film. They planted a camera facing them sitting in the front row of a comfy-looking screening room. The Blu-ray came out yesterday (9.22) and is available from Amazon for $25. The movie on its own is available on DVD and as a Digital Download.
