Copycat

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Biographies - Cast and Crew Audio Commentary - Jon Amiel (Director)
Rating
Year Released	1995
Running Time	118:03 minutes
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	2,4	Director	Jon Amiel
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Sigourney Weaver Holly Hunter Dermot Mulroney William McNamara Will Patton John Rothman J E Freeman Harry Connick Jr
Case	Snapper (original) Transparent Amaray (replacement)
RPI	$24.95	Music	Christopher Young

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s) French (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s) Italian (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s) English Audio Commentary (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?Yes	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English French Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, partly during credits

    Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver) is a criminal psychologist and something of an expert on serial killers. Typical of such people, she has written books about the biggies in the field and does the rounds of the lecturing circuit through universities and so on. This is done with police escort, the reasons for which are not explained but can be taken as read. However, one lecture concludes with a rather nasty encounter with one Daryll Lee Cullum (Harry Connick, Jr) and results in not only the death of a police officer but also turns Helen into an agoraphobic. Thirteen months on and she is now a prisoner of her flat, with her only real connection to the outside world being several computers. Thirteen months on too, a new serial killer is on the prowl and doing his best to emulate the biggies of the recent past through copycat crimes.

    With the second murder, Helen calls the police department and is initially treated as a crank but eventually homicide detective M.J. Monahan (Holly Hunter) tracks Helen down and enlists her help in trying to solve the murders together, and with little real help from either partner Ruben Goetz (Dermot Mulroney) or fellow officer (and ex love interest) Nicoletti (Will Patton) and boss Thomas Quinn (J E Freeman). As the killer follows his agenda, Helen and M J battle to not only seek him out but also to stop him before his ultimate target is reached. The bits in between have to be worked out from watching the film or else too much of the film is given away.

   What sets the film apart from your average thriller is not so much the story, which it is admitted is actually pretty well done, but rather the quality of the performances from the two female leads, around whom the entire film is based. Sigourney Weaver has never been one of my favourite actresses, but it is grudgingly admitted that this slightly different role for her is quite well-handled. Rather than being in control as she normally is, here she is a little less assured and more prone to insecurity - basically your very typical agoraphobic. On the other hand, Holly Hunter has always been a favourite actress and provides another one of her assured performances here. As for the rest of the cast, they are pretty well superfluous to the whole show. Only Harry Connick, Jr stands out as the slightly over-the-top serial killer and I still don't know whether it is a great acting performance or merely a parody of one. The whole film, though, can be boiled down to one name - any time you see the Director of Photography listed as Laszlo Kovacs, you are pretty much guaranteed of something a little bit different with a fair chance of being something a little bit special. This is certainly a little bit different and as director Jon Amiel goes to great lengths to explain in his commentary, the way the film was shot was extremely intentional and ultimately proves quite effective. In the end I would have to suggest that a fair degree of the success of the film is attributable not so much to Jon Amiel's skill as a director but rather due to his great foresight in hiring Laszlo Kovacs!

    There are plenty of films out there that proclaim to be thrillers but ultimately are anything but. Whilst this one is not liable to have you on the edge of your seat for two hours, it is quite effective nonetheless in a slightly unconventional way. At its original retail price indicator this was worthy of consideration, but at the new lower price is definitely a film worthy of adding to the collection.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced.

    Generally this is quite a sharp and well-detailed transfer, even allowing for some of the artistic shooting through grilles and meshes. Certainly the age of the film could have been expected to result in a better transfer than we actually got but really the way the film was shot sort of precludes it. The main issue here is that the shadow detail at times should have been a little bit more open, although that may again have been a factor of the way the film was shot. Clarity is good without being exceptional, and there were only moderate issues with grain present in the transfer. There did not appear to be any low level noise in the transfer.

    The colours are not especially vibrant (although the opening sequence is very vibrant in many ways) but they are quite naturally handled and are quite believable. Apart from a few obvious exceptions, there is not much in the way of bright primary colours here and the dark colours are handled pretty well indeed. The skin tones were generally well handled and that is a good indication of a decent colour palette. I could perhaps have wished for a bit more depth and solidity to the black tones but this is not really a huge disappointment. There are some slight instances of oversaturation of colours during the night club scene starting around the 86:00 mark, but again nothing really extreme at all. There is no problem with colour bleed in the transfer.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There were however plenty in the way of film-to-video artefacts in the transfer that really become a little tiresome. Shimmer, aliasing and moiré artefacting are quite prevalent in the transfer and whilst none were especially disgusting in their own right, the cumulative effect is not good. The transfer is also somewhat plagued with film artefacts and again whilst they were not especially ugly, the sheer consistency of those white flecks against a dark background are quite hard to ignore after a while.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain
Film-to-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue comes up well in the soundtrack and is generally easy to understand. It should be noted however that some scenes feature low level dialogue as a necessity so these may cause you some issue. There did not appear to be any audio sync problems in the transfer.

    The original music score comes from Christopher Young, and whilst it certainly draws upon some of the clichés of the genre, is just a little bit different to create a bit of distinctiveness. The score has been used in a somewhat different manner (well pointed out in the director's commentary) at times and the end result is a very supportive score that helps the film somewhat.

    Whilst it might well be a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, it is not a great example of one if you want lots of bells and whistles to demonstrate how good your home theatre gear is. There is quite restricted use of the bass channel as the film simply does not need much in the way of support from the bass channel. However, when infrequently called upon it did offer the support necessary. There is not a huge amount of rear surround channel use either, but once again with the film being so dialogue-based, it did not really need much rear channel action, which of course means that pretty much the bulk of the action comes across the front and centre channels, resulting in a slightly flat-sounding sound picture at times. In general however, there is little room for complaint as the entire film really does not need much in the way of those bells and whistles. It is free from any distortion.
 
 

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Biographies - Cast and Crew

Audio Commentary - Jon Amiel (Director)

• Theatrical trailer
• Production notes
• Additional Pan and Scan version of the film

• Different audio and subtitle options

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
28th March, 2001