Eraser: Reborn [Blu-Ray]

Director: John Pogue

Cast: Dominic Sherwood, Jacky Lai, McKinley Belcher III

Release Date: June 7, 2022

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Film Rating: 4.5/10
Disc Rating: 6.5/10

Synopsis:

U.S. Marshal Mason Pollard specializes in “erasing” people – faking the deaths of high-risk witnesses. With the technological advances of the last 25 years, the game has upgraded, and it’s just another day at the office when he’s assigned to Rina Kimura, a crime boss’ wife who’s decided to turn state’s evidence. As the two flee to Cape Town, South Africa, with a team of merciless assassins on their trail, Pollard discovers he’s been set up. Double-crossed and fueled by adrenaline, he needs to be at the top of his game, or he’ll be the one who’s erased. Permanently.

Please Note: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Post. The opinions I share are my own.

‘Eraser: Reborn’ follows U.S. Marshal Mason Pollard who specializes in erasing people in witness protection by staging their death and setting them up with new names and lives when their safety is threatened. But when Mason is ordered to protect Rina Kimura, the wife of a crime boss set to turn state’s evidence against her husband it sets off a chain reaction of chaos. Soon realizing that he’s been set up and unsure who he can trust, Mason must play it close to the chest as he fights his way to the truth of who is behind the set up while still trying to keep Rina safe in the process before both of them are permanently erased themselves.

Directed by John Pogue (The Quiet Ones, Deep Blue Sea 3) from a screenplay written by Michael Weiss (Hostel: Part III), Pogue does a pretty decent job at the helm of ‘Eraser: Reborn’ guiding along the revamped tale with some fairly good looking action and style. The film’s cast includes Dominic Sherwood (TV’s Shadowhunters), Jacky Lai (TV’s V-Wars), McKinley Belcher III (TV’s We Own This City) and Eddie Ramos (TV’s Animal Kingdom) along with more and the majority deliver fairly decent performances for the most part in each of their respective roles.

‘Eraser: Reborn’ isn’t a perfect film and it definitely struggles in a few areas but it’s not as bad as you might expect either. It manages to offer some fairly well constructed action sequences that look better than many you’ll typically find in straight to video films and also benefits from a beautiful shooting location and a cast that delivers pretty capable performances on top of it. While it does feature entirely different characters than the original 1996 ‘Eraser’ film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, it’s still largely a remake of that as opposed to a new story and adventure. Nearly all of the events within unfold almost identically to the first film and many of the lines are almost word for word duplicates. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that while most of it plays out almost exactly like its predecessor, much of the action is scaled down for this one with showdowns playing out amid city streets instead of on a crashing plane for instance; something that would have been futile to even attempt for a lower budget action flick such as this.

Fortunately, even with its faults throughout and the fact that it’s largely a replica of a bigger film ‘Eraser: Reborn’ is actually quite a bit of fun and delivers enough solid action-packed scenes throughout and some modern updates to the technology within to still make it worth giving a whirl for any fans of the original. It probably wouldn’t hurt to rent a copy instead of making a blind purchase just to be safe and you probably don’t need to rush out and get your hands on a copy immediately either, but if you come across I would encourage giving it a chance if you’re already even somewhat intrigued.

Overall, ‘Eraser: Reborn’ serves up a fairly entertaining ride with some solid action sequences throughout and a cast that delivers pretty decent performances to help to keep it moving. At the same time it’s basically a remake of the 1996 film scaled down and with notably less star power. Even with some upgrades to the technology utilized within, it’s hard to ignore the fact that it’s basically an inferior remake that even with new character names and settings, relies a bit too heavily on mimicking the original; going so far as delivering numerous lines from it verbatim. If you’re a fan of the original ‘Eraser’ film and enjoy a laid back action movie that’s nothing remarkable but still plenty of fun, then you may want to give this one a shot. If you aren’t fond of the original or aren’t overly interested in this one to begin with though then it’s probably safe to go ahead and skip it.

VIDEO:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Eraser: Reborn’ features a full 1080p High Definition presentation with the film’s original 2.39:1 Cinemascope Aspect Ratio. The video presentation looks pretty good as a whole and delivers a sharp, smooth and nicely detailed presentation from start to finish without any notable issues arising along the way. It holds up well even during the various darkly lit moments and fast moving action sequences, never resulting in anything that’s occurring onscreen becoming negatively affected or problematic. Overall, this is a solid high definition video presentation that does its job well and shouldn’t disappoint.

AUDIO:

The Blu-ray release features a 5.1 channel DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. This multichannel soundtrack offers a clean, crisp and fairly immersive audio presentation throughout. It regularly takes advantage of all five available channels in order to send gunshots, music and bits of crowd chatter, along with plenty more throughout the various speakers whenever appropriate and always making certain that any dialogue or other audio elements that might be occurring simultaneously remain clean and fully audible. Overall, this is a nice 5.1 DTS-HD MA soundtrack that sounds great throughout and contributes some extra fun and tension to the viewing experience.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Eraser: Reborn’ includes one extra, the Behind the Scenes Featurette ‘The Warrior and the Witness: The Making of Eraser: Reborn’ (running approximately 9 minutes in length) which includes interviews/comments with the cast and crew, plus behind the scenes footage and more.

*Please note that the above images are taken from the Blu-Ray and resized. They will additionally suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on this Blu-Ray release are the property of their respective owners.

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Film Rating: 4.5/10
Disc Rating: 6.5/10

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‘Eraser: Reborn’ is Now Available to Own on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

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