Critical Mass (Rental) (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Main Menu Audio Dolby Digital Trailer-Rain Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	91:06
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ed Raymond
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Treat Williams Lori Loughlin Udo Kier Andrew Prine Blake Clark Jack Betts
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	Rental	Music	Neal Acree

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

        For security guard Mike Jeffers (Treat Williams), this isn't just another day at work, it is his last day at work. His days guarding a nuclear power plant have come to an end as the plant is due to be closed, and now, his last duty is to guide a tour of the facility for a publicity-seeking Senator Cook. However, things are about to take a very dangerous turn. Criminal mastermind and terrorist Samson (Udo Kier) has stolen radioactive material and now he has come to the plant, thinking it unmanned, to plant his own nuclear device and demand the release of imprisoned terrorists. If his demands are not met and the prisoners not released, he'll unleash a bomb that will contaminate much of southern California and possibly kill millions. Too bad for Samson, as the plant isn't quite empty and with most of the senator's entourage killed by the terrorists, security guard Jeffers along with the help of the senator's press advisor Janine (Lori Loughlin) will have to stop Samson and his terrorist group before he can set off a chain reaction in the nuclear plant that will lay waste to half a state.

    You have got to be kidding. No, really, this surely must be a joke. Never in my born days have I seen such audacity. It is said that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery and if this is the case, then the films that this movie 'borrows' from must feel very flattered indeed. The reason for this is that this film actually uses footage from the films Terminator 2:  Judgement Day and Universal Soldier. Not stock footage or unused takes as this is not completely unheard of. Blade Runner (the theatrical version) used unused footage from The Shining (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) at the end of the film when Deckard and Rachael are flying away to a happy long life together. This is fine as the footage used was off-cuts that Stanley Kubrick didn't need. What this film does is quite another thing. At the start of the film, Samson leads his terrorist squad into the Cyberdyne Systems building to steal radioactive material. Yes, this is indeed The Cyberdyne Systems building as seen in Terminator 2 with even the name of the company used. As the police cars roll up to the crisis emerging at the building, Samson begins to fire at the oncoming police. This he does with another of his henchmen. The thing is, when the Terminator was firing on the police below, he was using a behemoth of a machine gun. Our baddies have relative pea shooters compared to Arnie's monster gun, yet they absolutely tear apart the police cars below with their fire. Also, when the getaway van is driven into the building's lobby, we see the waiting SWAT team limping away slowly from the crashing van. This is because the Terminator has shot them all in the leg and knee. The problem here is that this isn't Terminator 2 so Arnie isn't there to shoot anyone. However, we still see the SWAT team limp away. Huh? Things continue with the helicopter chase, with the motorcycle cop T-1000 clearly visible at the controls. Strange, as I could have sworn that I saw a different person piloting the chopper earlier during the Cyberdyne siege. Funny, that. Also at the end of the film is a big chase scene with Samson chasing Mike Jeffers across the desert. Samson is driving a huge modified semi chasing a blue school bus used for prisoner transport. Of course, this part hasn't been filmed for this movie, either. What we have here is some footage from Universal Soldier where Dolf Lungren is chasing Jean Claude Van Damme and Ally Walker in the Unisol Command Vehicle. Here they don't really explain what this vehicle is supposed to be, but it serves as a way for the baddies to chase after the goodies in the 'climax' of the film. This is really lazy filmmaking that generates more laughs than thrills.

    The performances are very much by the numbers...1 and 2 to be precise. Treat Williams is a poor man's Bruce Willis who performs numerous feats that his physique is clearly incapable of. He runs around like a superhero, yet he must be a cautious fellow as he carries a spare tyre wherever he goes. Lori Loughlin is fine as the senator's press aide and looks pretty, but she really isn't of much value other than someone reasonably likeable for Jeffers to rescue. And of course we have to have the totally predictable attraction between the leads. Udo Kier looks his usual menacing self, but we've seen him better before this in films including Blade, My Own Private Idaho and of course Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula. Ed Raymond is credited for this mess and one couldn't blame him for using a pseudonym...which he does for Ed Raymond  is in reality Fred Olen Ray whom, under various names, is responsible for such classics as Invisible Mom I & II, Invisible Dad, Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold, Scream Queen Hot Tub Party and The Brain Leaches. Almost worthy of the great director Alan Smithee, this is a real turkey and deserving of the category 'so bad it's good'. Watch if you're really bored and have nothing better do to, but beware...

Video

    The film is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced and considering that the film was probably intended for 1.85:1 (although this couldn't be confirmed) we probably have a reasonably close aspect ratio to the original theatrical version.

    The level of image sharpness here is quite good with a reasonably clean image available throughout. Most of this film takes place in fairly good light and so we don't have many really dark scenes, however the dark scenes we do have exhibit an acceptable level of shadow detail. I didn't find low level noise to be a problem.

    For the most part, colour use and portrayal is reasonable. Reds and blues did sometimes seem to be slightly overemphasized, but for the majority of the time the image colours looked quite good. Edge enhancement isn't as out-of-control as I'd have expected and while not rampant, it is there and can be seen throughout. Chroma noise is visible slightly at 66:15. There is what looks to be some sort of tracking error visible at 58:06, although I wasn't able to determine whether the tracking error was a digital tape or analogue tape one. The area within the tracking error did pixelate and this leads me to think that this is some type of digital tape tracking error. Film artefacts are relatively few with this being a fairly clean transfer except for one quite large black spot that appears mid screen at 11:52.

    This disc offers us English Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired as the only option with the titles being fairly accurate, although not word-for-word.

    This disc is formatted as a single layer, so therefore a layer change is not an issue.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    This disc offers us one audio mix only, that being an English Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. This track serves the film well with a busy and immersive audio soundfield.

    The dialogue quality is fairly good for such a title that, in years gone by, would only have seen the light of day on VHS. There was no issue with dialogue intelligibility with the spoken word discernible throughout. There is some slight audio distortion audible at 60:03 and 75:29 with what sounds like overmiked dialogue. This takes place with only one character in the film, that being Sheriff Bordon (Blake Clark) who has a very loud voice and tends to shout his lines. Perhaps the sound engineer didn't compensate for this actor's loud voice which, in the end, distorts just slightly when he speaks (yells).

     Audio sync is never a real problem.

     The music for this feature is by a relatively new composer, Neal Acree, who can make his keyboard sound just like a whole orchestra. A simple and adequate score that does just what it is supposed to do without setting the world on fire.

     There is a fair amount of surround presence during this movie and the disc brings this to us quite well. Some prime examples are at 5:05, 7:02, 7:35 and 18:41 with the helicopter and gunfire being the main contributors.

     The subwoofer gets some work to, mainly from the on-screen action with the various explosions and gunfire. The musical score never seems to trouble the subwoofer much.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

     This is a bare bones disc with very little in the way of extras.

Menu

     After the distributor's logos, we are taken to the disc's main menu that offers us:

• Play
• Scene Selection
• Theatrical Trailer
• Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired On/Off

     The Main Menu is animated and features music from the soundtrack. Audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded. The menus are 16x9 enhanced.

Theatrical Trailer - 1:38

     This basic trailer covers all the film's 'high' points and makes the film look much better than it really is. I guess this is the job of a trailer though isn't it? The trailer is presented full frame with Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded audio.

    This title was released in Region 1 on January 21, 2003. We got it just that little bit early (for rental, anyway). The Region 1 disc features a Photo Gallery, Sneak Peeks (presumably trailers for other Artisan titles as they are the company distributing the disc in Region 1), Director and Cast Filmographies. The Region 1 disc also gets a Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded audio track as well as Spanish subtitles. This would give the Region 1 disc the slightest edge, but not a large one. Your call, folks.

   Why these sort of titles are continually made I'll never know. There must be an insatiable appetite for the rental of these things. If you are in the mood for brain dead action that at no time challenges the viewer, then this is for you. The use of footage from other films is the only high point and generates a bit of laughter for fans of classic popular film, but when you see characters reach into containers of liquid nitrogen with their bare hands and come out unscathed (this in the first 5 minutes of the film), you know you are watching a turkey. Gobble, Gobble.

     The video is reasonable with a few faults but nothing that detracts from the film.

     The audio is good with all 6 channels used effectively.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall