Flatliners

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - Columbia Tristar DVD Promo
Year Released	1990	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	110 minutes	Other Extras	Cast & Crew Filmographies
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	4	Director	Joel Schumacher
Studio Distributor	Columbia Tristar	Starring	Kiefer Sutherland Julia Roberts Kevin Bacon William Baldwin Oliver Platt
Case	Transparent Amaray
RRP	$34.95	Music	James Newton Howard

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Dolby Digital	2.0
16x9 Enhancement	Yes	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 ) French (Dolby Digital 2.0 )
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes
Subtitles	English French Dutch Arabic	Smoking	Yes

    Flatliners is fundamentally a "what-if" movie - What if you could stop your heart and experience clinical death? What if you could be revived and live to tell about the experience? Five medical students do exactly that - Nelson (Kiefer Sutherland), Joe (William Baldwin), Labraccio (Kevin Bacon), and Rachel (Julia Roberts) all "flatline" for increasing periods of time whilst Steckle (Oliver Platt) looks on.

    The events that occur before, during and after they "flatline" make for a riveting two hours. Excellent cinematography and music help set the mood. Even Julia Roberts, whom I despise with a vengeance, is tolerable in this movie, mainly because she doesn't say very much.

Video

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

    The transfer was sharp and clear throughout. Shadow detail was excellent, and no low level noise was apparent.

    The colours were well rendered at all times. In particular, many scenes were very strongly blue-lit, and these were all clear and free of noise.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of a few wobbles in the picture early on, though this is more likely to be a part of the original film rather than an artefact as such. Film artefacts were virtually non-existent, an excellent characteristic of this transfer.

Audio

    Dialogue was hard to hear at times, particularly early on in the movie, where ambient music tended to drown it out. This improved towards the latter part of the movie, but nonetheless remained somewhat muffled throughout. This was a significant problem with this transfer, though not a truly bad problem. This movie, whilst not being totally dialogue-driven, nonetheless relies heavily on dialogue, so unintelligible dialogue is a real issue. Having said that, however, the movie is credited as being created in Dolby Stereo, so we have been treated to a remix which sounds much better than the original audio as seen on the Theatrical Trailer.

    There were no audio sync problems.

    The score by James Newton Howard was basically an ambient score, and in conjunction with the excellent cinematography was superb in creating the appropriate atmosphere.

     The surround channel was used for music, and was moderately enveloping at these times. Frequently, however, the surrounds fell silent, and there was little to no ambient background sound in this channel. As mentioned above, at times, the surround sound tended to drown out the dialogue, but this never became a major issue.

    The .1 channel received signal from my surround processor, and there was lots of bass in the music mix being sent to the subwoofer.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

DVD Trailer

Filmographies

    The video quality is very good, especially considering the film's age.

    The audio quality is acceptable, though a significant amount of dialogue is hard to hear which is a pity.

    The extras are limited but acceptable.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
21st April 1999