The Film (3.5/5)

Mike Figgis makes his feature film directorial debut(he also wrote it) with the contemporary Film Noir, crime drama entitled Stormy Monday. It’s your basic story of a crooked American businessman (now, can you imagine that!?!) named Cosmo (veteran actor Tommy Lee Jones, Men In Black, No Country For Old Men) who wants to buy a jazz club called The Key Club in Newcastle, England from its owner, Finney (Sting) and is being heavily pressured into selling it. The subplot is a new hire to the club, Brendan (Sean Bean, The Lord of the Rings, Silent Hill) who overhears a conversation from two gangsters about buying the Key Club. He wants to assist Finney and prevent Cosmo from acquiring the club, along with his newfound girlfriend, Kate (Melanie Griffith, Mulholland Falls). There is more to Kate than meets the eye, which I will not reveal as I don’t do spoilers. 

Stormy Monday has a lot of positives; we get a great cast (Sting, Tommy Lee Jones, Melanie Griffith, Sean Bean) giving excellent performances, some great acting by the cast, a Noirish atmosphere and a great amount of Jazz. Director Figgis handled the musical scores along with a couple of other bands, The Krakow Jazz Ensemble and The Don Weller Band. 

On the flip side I thought Stormy Monday had a couple of negatives, such as the movie maybe moving a little too slow, maybe a little too lethargic and even though I do like jazz music, I thought some of the music in this film was atrocious. Watching this movie may also make viewers recall and compare this to a similar film, Get Carter.

The movie may also come across as anti-American, which at the time when this film was made may not have meant much, but seeing it in today’s society with all the corruption going on in our country with our current administration, what I saw in this film really hit home and made me think about what’s going on now in North America, which has been greatly embarrassed by and frowned up by other world leaders. Okay, Stormy Fiction and its characters are fictional, but corruption and crooked business leaders are part of the real world and in our current society.

Audio/Video (4.5)

Stormy Monday is presented from Arrow Video, offering a Blu-ray / DVD combo (the review of the audio / video quality will only cover the HD version). It’s released in 1080p with an MPEG-4 AVC encode in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Needless to say but Arrow has done this movie justice; the image quality simply looks really stunning. The colors look quite vivid and saturated especially reds and blues, which are really bold. Details are very clear throughout with strong textures. Flesh tones look authentic and also quite detailed. Daylight scenes as with the majority of Blu-ray releases benefit really well in HD as they look visually stunning.

Stormy Monday features an English LPCM 2.0 track and the dialog, musical numbers and other sounds come in really strong. The jazz and some of the dialog music really sounds amplified at times; some dialog has that echoing sound, but that might have been the intent. There are optional English subtitles included on this release.

Extras (3/5)

Most of Arrow Video’s releases are very strong on extras. This one isn’t quite as strong but there are still some good supplements to enjoy. There is an audio commentary with features writer-director Mike Figgis hosted by Damon Wise, a featurette called “Just the Same? Stormy Monday 30 Years On”, a theatrical trailer an image gallery, and as usual, Arrow has also included a booklet essaying the film. There is also the usual reversible cover. 

Overall (4/5)

This is another great release of a contemporary classic courtesy of Arrow Video. A fun movie, with great audio and video quality and some good extras make Stormy Monday a recommended release!