Portrait of Murder (The Rendering) (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Menu Animation & Audio Trailer-The Bone Collector; Jagged Edge; Single White Female Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	87:59 (Case: 92)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Peter Svatek
Studio Distributor	Hearst Entertainment Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Shannen Doherty Peter Outerbridge Stephen Young John H. Brenna
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$39.95	Music	James Gelfand

    If you were wondering whatever happened to Shannen Doherty from Beverly Hills 90210 ... well, wonder no more, for this is a made-for-TV thriller with her as the major protagonist.

    Ten years ago, an art student named Sarah (Shannen Doherty) was finishing up a painting of a mother and child. As she is leaving the university, she is pursued by a stalker/admirer who stabs her and nearly kills her. Luckily, she utilizes her drawing skills to sketch a very good rendering of his face, enabling the police to find and capture him - a young man by the name of Gray (Peter Outerbridge).

    Fast forward to "today." Sarah is now a successful businesswoman married to Michael (John Brennan). However, she still moonlights as a police sketch artist, capturing portraits of criminals based on descriptions provided by their victims. One day, she sketches a murderer/rapist and is shocked to discover it is a portrait of someone who looks like her husband. Could it be ...

    Guess what happens next? Her husband is arrested and incriminating evidence is found at their home. At first, Sarah is not sure whether her husband really is the perpetrator, but then other clues emerge. He is six feet tall, but the victim describes her attacker as 5 feet seven inches tall. Soon she starts to suspect that Michael has been framed, but by whom and why?

    The twists in this story are fairly predictable. I guess for a made-for-TV movie it's not too bad, but there is far better fare out there.

Video

    Given that this is a made-for-TV movie, we are treated to a 1.33:1 transfer - presumably this is the intended aspect ratio.

    This is a decent but unexceptional transfer, with average shadow detail and medium contrast. Colours are reasonably well saturated.

    Detail levels are good, but not exceptional, as can be evidenced from the close-up of the newspaper print around 31:17-31:20 (you can clearly read headlines but the small print is quite blurry). A reference quality transfer would have allowed me to actually read the small print.

    As you might expect, the film source is quite clean and grain, although present, is never at annoying levels. I did not notice any compression artefacts nor did I note the presence of edge enhancement.

    There are no subtitle tracks on this single sided single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only one audio track: English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s).

    I don't know whether the audio track is surround-encoded, but it certainly doesn't need cinema re-equalization, and engaging Dolby Pro Logic II provided a nice faux spread of Foley effects into the surround channels. There are minimal panning effects across the front channels.

    Dialogue is pretty clear throughout and I did not notice any issues with audio synchronization.

    The background music is very derivative of other thriller films with the original music score credited to James Gelfand.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The extras on this disc are limited to trailers.

Menu

    The main menu is full frame but animated and includes an intro and background animation.

Trailer-The Bone Collector; Jagged Edge; Single White Female, Theatrical Trailer (6:58)

    These are encoded as a single title so you can play all trailers in sequence. The trailers are presented in a mixture of 1.33:1 (full frame/pan & scan) and 1.78:1 letterboxed. The audio track is Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s).

    This title has yet to be released in Region 1.

    Portrait of Murder, also called The Rendering, is a made-for-TV thriller starring Shannen Doherty.

    The video transfer is acceptable.

    The audio transfer is also acceptable.

    Extras are limited to four trailers.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall