The Client

General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1994	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	116 minutes	Other Extras	Production Notes Cast & Crew Biographies
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	4	Director	Joel Schumacher
Distributor	Warner Brothers	Starring	Susan Sarandon Tommy Lee Jones Mary-Louise Parker Anthony LaPaglia Anthony Edwards Ossie Davis
RRP	$29.95	Music	Howard Shore

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Dolby Digital	2.0
16x9 Enhancement	Yes	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 )
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
Macrovision	Yes
Subtitles	English Arabic Polish Greek Czech Turkish Hungarian Icelandic Croatian English for the Hearing Impaired

    Pretty quickly, Mark Sway (Brad Renfro), our intrepid youngster, figures out that he needs a lawyer, and picks Reggie Love (Susan Sarandon). He needs protection from the FBI, headed by Roy Foltrigg (Tommy Lee Jones) and also from the mob who have figured out that he knows too much and want him killed.

    Things get pretty out of control, with both the FBI and the mob after Mark, so he ultimately takes matters into his own hands.

    As far as thrillers go, this is not a bad one at all. It certainly kept me entertained rather than looking at my watch. Brad Renfro in his screen debut and both Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones keep us enthralled as the plot unfolds. I will, say, however, that there are a number of plot holes and implausibilities in this story, but none are glaringly bad enough to detract from the movie.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer was generally sharp, but a few scenes were a bit out of focus, particular some scenes which are blue-lit which were quite blurred. The overall transfer was very dark, and I would suggest watching this movie in darkness to compensate. Shadow detail was mostly good, with a few scenes lacking in detail. No low level noise was apparent.

    The colours were highly saturated throughout this movie. This was a consistent characteristic, and was almost to the stage of oversaturated, but not quite. You may want to turn the colour control down a notch or two to watch this transfer.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen.

    Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some minor aliasing here and there. There was a little more of this present than I am used to seeing with current generation transfers, but nothing was of major concern.

    Film artefacts were relatively common and distracting early on in the transfer, but then they settled down somewhat to become acceptably few and far between as the movie passed.

Audio

    Dialogue was generally centralized, and was very clear and easy to understand all of the time.

    The music by Howard Shore adds nicely to the atmosphere of the movie.

     The surround channel was used for music, some ambience and a few special effects. It varied from being quite an up-front-and-centre mix to being an enveloping mix. Whilst acceptable, I have certainly heard considerably more enveloping matrix soundtracks.

    The .1 channel received subwoofer signal from the processor, but was not worked overly hard.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Production Notes

Cast & Crew Biographies

    The video quality is quite acceptable with only minor imperfections.

    The audio quality is good but not great.

    The extras are quite limited, but interesting nonetheless.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
2nd February 1999