A mini documentary that looks at the writing process that led Joe Carnahan to develop his own short film into a full screenplay. He talks about how he managed to get Ray Liotta onboard and then the casting of the rest of the cast. They also talk about the fact that they shot the film in Toronto but used some rough locations in Detroit.
One of four documentaries on the Narc UK DVD, each lasting about 12 minutes long, this is an interesting piece that may not be as good as a full documentary on the subject but is still interesting. The question I couldn't shake was why they didn't just put all of the shorts together and edit it into an hour long documentary; maybe they thought people get put off by a longer feature and prefer it in smaller chunks.
Anyway, this short is the most basic of the four but is still enjoyable. The information about the writing of the story is quite good (why was the original short not put on the dvd?) but the stuff about the casting and cast is nothing that you won't be used to - the usual sort of praising stuff about how good everyone was. The information on location is interesting, but too infrequently does it have personal input, but the stuff about shooting in Detroit was good and I hadn't realised that Patric had done a real walkabout with real people rather than just shooting with actors.
The downside of this documentary is the overuse of clips as opposed to interviews and personal anecdotes and stories from the making of the film. All the interviews are good and worth seeing but they are not given enough time or enough open questions and discussions to extract good information. The documentary seems in a rush and moves too fast - it is edited way too frantically and it doesn't help the material.
Overall this is the lesser of the documentaries on the DVD but it is still interesting - on it's own it's disappointing, but viewed as the first 10 minutes of a longer documentary then it is acceptable.
