Bare Witness (2001)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Diary Of A Sex Addict
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	84:57
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Kelley Cauthen
Studio Distributor	Mainline Releasing Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Angie Everhart Daniel Baldwin Evan MacKenzie
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$36.95	Music	Michael Vista

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Russian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement	No
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Russian Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Bare Witness is a weak soft-porn detective movie on a poor DVD.

    From the makers of Dead Sexy (reviewed here by Terry M), comes Bare Witness. The same weak formula has been applied: Grab a known Playboy Playmate as the star of a slow and predictable detective story. Pepper it with lengthy, simulated sex scenes, plenty of female nudity, and plenty of clichés, such as the Dirty Harry-style detective with a bad attitude and no respect for authority -- one who does things his way.

    LA prostitute Julie (Catalina Larranga), and one of her customers, hitman and former Navy Seal Gav (Mark Siverteen) video themselves 'on the job'. Afterwards, Gav realises that this was probably a bad idea, and wants the tape back. Gav's boss, another former Navy Seal, and now millionaire property developer, Hunter (Evan MacKenzie) sees to this, and poor Julie comes to some misfortune in the process. Her flatmate, former porn-star Carly (Angie Everhart) also becomes a target, and Detective Killian (Daniel Baldwin), steps in to provide protection, a love story, and more sex scenes.

Video

    The transfer is presented in a full frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1.

    The image is generally very soft, and the shadow detail is poor.

    The colour appears a tad undersaturated, and the skin tones are a little brown.

    MPEG artefacts appear in the form of pixelization. While there are no glaring film-to-video artefacts, film artefacts appear throughout as tiny flecks.

    There are 17 sets of subtitles, and the English ones are accurate.

    This is a single-sided, single-layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are two audio options: English and Russian Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded (both 192Kb/s).

    Both the dialogue quality and the audio sync are poor. For example, the dialogue often appears dubbed, and often appears slightly out, such as at 33:02.

    The music is credited to Michael Vista, and it is simple, but effective.

    The surround presence and activity is very limited, and only a small amount of the score is piped to the rears. There was no noticeable subwoofer action.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

   There are limited extras.

Menu

   A simple menu, presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1.

Trailers

   The trailers for Bare Witness and Diary of a Sex Addict.

    The Region 1 and 4 DVDs are basically the same.

    Bare Witness attempts to 'straddle' the genres of porn and detective mystery, and as Terry M noted with Dead Sexy, in doing so it fails to please either genre's audience.

    The video quality is acceptable for what it is.

    The audio quality is also acceptable.

    The extras are slim.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall