Forest Whitaker stars as William Garnett, an ex-con starting life over as a recently converted Muslim. With the help of his determined parole officer (Brenda Blethyn), he gets a job, meets an interesting woman, and keeps his head down. But the town sheriff, Bill Agati (Harvey Keitel), can’t leave him alone since Garnett was responsible for killing his deputy. As Agati puts pressure on him, and his old partners in crime hassle him, Garnett slowly starts to unravel. When his former life catches up with him, Garnett has to make peace with his past and face the future head on, with a gun.

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[youtube https://youtu.be/NPSkblYBPOE?t=2078]

Video Quality

Two Men In Town comes to Blu-Ray in a 1080p presentation that makes a good impression from beginning to end. The film does not take any bold swings with its cinematography, but it frames the setting really well. The barren, yet quite beautiful, desert environment pops off the screen with an incredible amount of detail. From the sandy expanses to the grungy room that William finds himself in after getting out of prison, this transfer feels as if you could reach out and feel the textures on display. The colors lean more warm to suit the environment, and every hue feels fully saturated in this transfer. The skin tones look very detailed and natural all around. The white levels are very strong without veering into blooming, not to mention the intensely deep blacks that do not appear to suffer from any compression artifacts. There are no instances of intrusive digital noise in the presentation outside of a few brief instances. This presentation is very pleasing from Cohen Media Group.

Audio Quality

The film comes to Blu-Ray with a more than capable DTS-HD 5.1 and 2.0 Master Audio track in the original English. The dialogue and sound effects are appropriately balanced with the score where nothing gets overpowered in the track. The score reinforces the emotions on display as it flows gently through with flawless fidelity. Surround channels get some subtle activity from the chatter at some work sites to the wind blowing through the plains. The movie does feature some minor scuffles, but the calm moments make up more of the film as they provide environmental activity which comes through particularly well. The low end of the track rarely does more than just add a bit of base texture to certain scenes. This track gets the job done effectively.

Special Features

The Fence – Making-Of Documentary: A terrific 55-minute documentary in which the cast and creative team discuss the desire to bring this story to the screen, the stories that informed the screenplay, the arc of the story, the characters and performances in the film, the heightened emotions behind the project and more. While this does touch a bit on the filmmaking itself, this focuses heavily on the situation at the border at large and the realities faced by people on the ground as told by the people living it. This piece was obviously made for French audiences with the text in French, but the dialogue is largely in English with forced English subtitles provided for the non-English portions.

Trailer: The two-minute trailer is provided here.

Final Thoughts

Two Men In Town can feel a bit overwrought at times, but the generally excellent performances go a long way towards elevating the movie overall. The film is effective when it comes to creating tension and dread in what would otherwise be a fairly routine scenario. The messaging of the movie is not exactly subtle, but those who can get onto the film’s wavelength will find this to be a fairly engaging narrative. Cohen Media Group and Kino Lorber have released a Blu-Ray featuring a strong A/V presentation and a robust documentary. If you are a fan of character-based conflicts of the soul, there is more good to this film than bad. Recommended

Two Men In Town is currently available to purchase on Blu-Ray and Digital.

Note: Images presented in this review are not reflective of the image quality of the Blu-Ray.

Disclaimer: Cohen Media Group and Kino Lorber have supplied a copy of this disc free of charge for review purposes. All opinions in this review are the honest reactions of the author.