Billy Evans (Derek Smith) is struggling a bit financially, and his wife Barbara (Katrina Bowden) eagerly wants a child. Billy definitely isn’t interested in that—particualy when Barbara’s sister, Wendy (Chelsea Debo), indicates that their secret affair will be over when a baby arrives—she apparently has her limits and doesn’t want to be a homewrecker. Billy’s childhood best friend is Jacko Stern (Chet Hanks)—who has actually managed to live out out his dream of becoming Ray Liota from Goodfellas. Jacko is a local mob boss who has his hands in all kinds of criminal enterprises, and offers Billy a job. Though Barbara is a bit concerned about her husband getting sucked into this seedy underworld. (Little does she know that his morals are already out the window.)

One of Jacko’s top earners is tough guy Rollie Barnes (Joshua Bitton)—a ruthless drug dealer and bookie who loves his job, and enjoys watching his right hand man, Dell (Robert Crayton) inflict some pain when people fail to make their payments. Ethan Boggs (Rob Schneider) has a gambling habit and owes a lot of money to Rollie, and now finds himself forced to become Rollie’s personal mob lawyer, taking on whatever questionable clients he needs him to.

Word spreads about Ethan Boggs, and Billy gets the idea to solve two problems at once—to get rid of his forthcoming baby and get rich quick. He wants the reluctant lawyer to broker the deal with a couple looking to replace a child they lost—recently released convict Jacob (Blake Shields) and his wife Sarah (Rosalie Ward). But things quickly get complicated for all involved when insurance investigator Drake (Cress Williams, Black Lightning), starts looking into the matter.

Dead Wrong feels like something you’d hear about in a true crime podcast or a season of Fargo, where these nine various characters are all up to no good, each doing despicable things and making poor decisions that will ultimately come back to haunt them and/or destroy their lives. What starts off as seemingly-separate stories becomes one big intertwined and deadly mess for these characters.

While the film feels a bit lower budget at times, I still found the acting to be solid, and the movie to be quite entertaining. The film finds this nice blend between drama, tension and humor. The characters are fun and quirky, and the story takes some interesting and unexpected plot turns. It was also nice to see Rob Schneider in a slightly more dramatic role (though he still gets his humorous moments). He does a great job of making you care about his character and his plight, even though he got himself into this situation. I found the ending to be a bit over the top and out there, and one of the twists didn’t really make sense/wasn’t really explained, but still enjoyed the movie overall.

The Blu-ray offers the film in both its original version as well as a Director’s Cut, which is actually about 6 minutes shorter. I primarily watched the Director’s Cut, but tried to compare the two, which was a little difficult to do as a lot of the same scenes are just reorganized. The original version opens with a short, dark 2-minute scene set in the future, before jumping back 1 year earlier, while the Director’s Cut opens on a much lighter tone, with Rollie singing along to a pop tune on the radio as he drives down the highway. Scenes generally seem to include much of the same content, though they are edited differently, and some appear in a different order. The Director’s Cut tends to have longer cuts that stay with a single character through their scene, while the original version is constantly cutting back and forth between different characters/scenes. I can’t say which is the better version overall, but from what I watched of the two, I preferred the Director’s Cut.

Mill Creek has released Dead Wrong on Blu-ray, and the video presentation looks great, with a sharp, clean picture, natural-looking colors, and a solid level of detail, especially in close-ups of faces. The original cut of the film offers a 5.1 audio track while the Director’s Cut only offers a 2.0 track. The dialogue is clear throughout, but the film lacks a really immersive feeling with either track. That said, the 5.1 is a bit fuller overall.

The release is barebones, with no bonus material or trailers, just offering the subtitle on/off and version selection on the main menu. The disc is packed in a standard HD keepcase, and our review copy did not include any slipcover.

What’s Included:

Film (Original Cut: 1:50:46, Director’s Cut: 1:44:26):

• 1080p / Widescreen 1.78:1
• Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio (Original Cut), English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio (Director’s Cut)
• Subtitles: English SDH

Extras:

No bonus material except for the Director’s Cut option.

Final Thoughts:

Overall I found Dead Wrong to be a pretty entertaining film. It has some interesting ideas and twists, and the cast is generally solid. The presentation looks and sounds good, but lacks any bonus material. There seems to be a lot of these crime-gone-wrong thrillers with intertwined character stories, but at the right price, this one may be worth checking out.

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Dead Wrong [Blu-Ray]

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Dead Wrong [Blu-Ray]