President's Man, The: Ground Zero (2000) |
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General | Extras | ||
Category | Action | Main Menu Audio & Animation | |
Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 2000 | ||
Running Time | 86:38 (Case: 90) | ||
RSDL / Flipper | No/No | Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Menu | ||
Region Coding | 4 | Directed By |
Eric Norris Michael Preece |
Studio
Distributor |
Imagine Entertainment |
Starring |
Chuck Norris Jennifer Tung Robert Urich Judson Mills Dylan Neal |
Case | Click | ||
RPI | ? | Music | Christopher Stone |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Pan & Scan | English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) | |
Widescreen Aspect Ratio | None | ||
16x9 Enhancement | No | ||
Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
Original Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | Miscellaneous | |
Jacket Pictures | No | ||
Subtitles | None | Smoking | Yes |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | No |
The beauty of Chuck Norris movies is that they are hit or miss affairs. In this case, it’s an unfortunate miss.
Joshua McCord (Chuck Norris) is the head of a small team of specialists whose sole purpose is to implement the US President's orders in times of crisis. Together with his daughter Que (Jennifer Tung), and operations specialist Deke Slater (Dylan Neal), the trio are always able to pull off jobs that the military and "official" law enforcement agencies cannot. Their success is due in part to their small number and also due to the fact that their existence is only known about by the president himself, giving them the element of surprise. They also pack some heavy firepower and enough special gadgets to make 007's Q jealous. I wonder if Jennifer Tung's screen name was a subtle play on this fact.
We open with guns blazing, as Saddam's guards are hunting down Deke. This sequence reminded me of the old TV show The A-Team. In that show, just as in this one, jeeps loaded with heavy firepower in the form of mounted semi-automatic machine guns cannot put a single bullet into whomever they are chasing. I mean, come on - couldn’t he even get a little flesh wound rather than simply expending several thousand rounds of ammunition to no avail?
The story plays out strikingly similarly to what is happening in the world today. The US is being terrorised by groups of Islamic terrorists and the President calls Joshua to assemble his team and eliminate the threat. All the while the military are having their meetings and want to unleash their arsenal on the targets. The bad guys manage to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the country and now Joshua and the gang have to work overtime to save the day.
If you want to see a group of terrorists smuggle a nuclear weapon into the USA and try and detonate it then I would strongly suggest you hire True Lies instead.
The transfer exhibited a soft image reminiscent in appearance of its videotape source. Shadow detail is a problem with most scenes exhibiting too much grain in the shadows or insufficient clarity to see the darker objects without straining. One notable exception was at 12:54 where the night sky was deep and black. There is low-level noise throughout the feature.
The colours were muted and drab, no doubt as a result of the source material. The pyrotechnic display at 2:03 was colourful but still limited in its visual appeal.
The most notable artefact was edge enhancement. At 42:56 there was an excessive amount of enhancement in the scene. From 46:24 to 46:29 it was there to a lesser extent. Aliasing is common but mild when it does occur. Film artefacts are very common as well and the file footage used at around the 33 minute mark was of very poor quality in this regard. The worst point was at 33:45.
This disc is a single sided single layered disc, so therefore there is no layer change.
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
The musical score was about as exciting as the main feature and provided a dull background to the action. The volume levels did not drown out the dialogue at any point during the movie.
The surround-encoded audio channels were mildly used for music ambience and special effects. For the majority of the time they were quiet with the backing music being almost inaudible. Engaging Pro-Logic II decoding did provide some mild directional effects but don’t expect too much in this area, either.
The subwoofer was not used during this feature.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;
Fans of Chuck Norris will not see him acting a great deal in this movie. All of the operations and serious fighting are left to Dylan Neal. There is little here to keep you interested and the plot is something that was done better in other movies.
The video quality was essentially the same as VHS.
The audio also leaves a lot to be desired.
There are no extras.
Video | |
Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | Pioneer DV-533K, using Component output |
Display | Loewe Aconda 9381ZW. Calibrated with Video Essentials/Ultimate DVD Platinum. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials/Ultimate DVD Platinum. |
Amplification | Denon AVR-2802 Dolby EX/DTS ES Discrete |
Speakers | Whatmough Audiolabs Magnum M30 (Mains); M05 (Centre); M10 (Rears); Magnat Vector Needle Sub25A Active SubWoofer |