The Long Kiss Goodnight

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General		Extras
Category	Action Thriller	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1996	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	116 minutes	Other Extras	Cast & Crew Interviews Featurette - Untitled (6 mins) Featurette - Making Of (9 1/2 mins) Cast Biographies
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (91:27)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	4	Director	Renny Harlin
Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Geena Davis Samuel L. Jackson Patrick Malahide Craig Bierko Brian Cox David Morse
RRP	$34.95	Music	Alan Silvestri

    Samantha and Mitch head from lead to lead, whilst Samantha tries to put the pieces of her old life together, and to make sense of what is going on in the post cold war era. All of a sudden, the line has blurred between the good guys and the bad guys.

    There are a lot of great action sequences in this movie, along with a great plot, which kept me entertained all of the way through.

    [Addendum 2nd April 1999: Some versions of the Toshiba 2108 DVD player will also not play this disc.]

Video

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

    The transfer was clear and sharp at all times. Shadow detail was good. This movie frequently takes place in very low-lit conditions, and I would advise watching it at night or in a very closely light-controlled room. No low level noise marred the picture.

    The colours were nicely balanced and even throughout, with colours that were neither oversaturated nor undersaturated.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of a number of scenes with quite significant aliasing - the worst one is an overhead shot of snow-covered car park - but these scenes are short, and generally tolerable. Film artefacts are present during the opening and closing credits, but absent during the feature.

    The movie has a total running time of 116 minutes (incorrectly stated on the packaging as being 120 minutes).

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change at 91:27, between Chapters 21 and 22. There is a brief fade to black and then the layer change occurs. This layer change is placed in the middle of an action sequence, and is moderately disruptive to the flow of the movie. Of course, it is far less disruptive than getting up to flip the disc over, but nonetheless, I felt that the layer change position could have been selected more appropriately.

Audio

    Dialogue was usually clear and easily understood in this movie, though the loudest bits of dialogue sounded quite distorted at times. A few individual words are a little hard to understand at times, but this probably reflects the actors' delivery of these lines more than anything else.

    There were no audio sync problems with the movie.

    The musical score was written by Alan Silvestri. It is an excellent score which accompanies the on-screen action perfectly, complementing it nicely. There is also a wide range of contemporary classics accompanying the movie which also blend very nicely with the on-screen action.

     The surround channels were heavily used for frequent ambience, music and frequent special effects. They were active throughout the majority of the movie, and were quite effective in creating an enveloping soundfield.

    The .1 channel was used heavily and effectively.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Featurette - Making Of

Featurette - Untitled

Cast & Crew Interviews

Cast Biographies

    The video quality is good.

    The audio quality is excellent.

    The extras are standard Roadshow Home Entertainment fare, although the Theatrical Trailer is very badly compressed with frequent compression artefacts.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
9th March 1999
Amended 2nd April 1999