The Evil That Men Do (1984) |
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General | Extras | ||
Category | Action |
Theatrical Trailer Trailer-The Replacement Killers; Hard Times; The Big Hit |
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Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 1984 | ||
Running Time | 86:34 (Case: 90) | ||
RSDL / Flipper | No/No | Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Menu | ||
Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | J. Lee Thompson |
Studio
Distributor |
Sony Pictures Home Entertain |
Starring |
Charles Bronson Joseph Maher Theresa Saldana Amanda Nicole Thomas Rene Enriquez Antoinette Bower |
Case | ? | ||
RPI | $19.95 | Music | None Given |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) |
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Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | ||
16x9 Enhancement |
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Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
Original Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Miscellaneous | |
Jacket Pictures | No | ||
Subtitles |
English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish |
Smoking | Yes |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | No |
I first saw The Evil That Men Do as a teenager, and was quite shocked by it. This time around, it seemed a little dated and was nowhere near as shocking as I remembered it being.
In The Evil that Men Do, Holland (Charles Bronson) is a retired hit man living the good life on an island paradise. Holland's now peaceful existence is shattered when he is enticed back to work to avenge a murdered friend. Holland is informed that his friend, George Hidaglo, a Latin American journalist, was murdered by the notorious master torturer Dr Clement Mollock (Joseph Maher), better known as "The Doctor".
(SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read)Holland enlists the help of George's widow Rhinan (Theresa Saldana), and her daughter Sarah (Amanda Nicole Thomas) as part of his cover. With the information provided by informant Max Ortiz (Rene Enriquez), Holland sets about intimidating The Doctor. He achieves this by eliminating his protectors one by one. In a final attempt to flush out the now-vulnerable Doctor, Holland kidnaps his sister Claire (Antoinette Bower) and holds her for ransom.
However, things don't go exactly to plan when The Doctor captures Max and Sarah. As expected, he tortures Max for information and takes Sarah hostage in the hope of trading her for his sister. Holland lures The Doctor to a deserted mine to conduct the trade, but, the mine is not deserted - it is filled with peasant miners, many of whom were tortured by The Doctor in the past. The trade does not go well, especially since The Doctor's sister is already dead. Holland kills the Doctor's remaining driver/bodyguard enabling Sarah to escape. The miners by now recognise the totally unprotected Doctor and en masse decide to exact their revenge.
Considering the age of this movie, I was surprised at the quality of the transfer, although it is by no means perfect.
The Evil that Men Do is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.
The transfer suffers slightly from grain throughout, although this is not distracting. The grain does, however, affect the sharpness and overall feel of the transfer. The amount of detail visible in the shadows is just passable but would have been better if the grain had not been present.
The colours of the transfer were just passable. The colours were constant and did not fluctuate, however, the movie looked dull and washed-out from beginning to end.
I did not notice any MPEG artefacts and only slight aliasing occurred on rare occasions. There were numerous small film artefacts present during the movie but only one at 64:16 is worth noting.
This is a single layered disc therefore there is no layer change present.
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
The audio track was tolerable but so much more could have been offered.
There are five audio tracks present on this DVD; English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, all Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192kbps).
The overall dialogue quality was acceptable. On occasions, the actors' speech came across slightly muffled and harder to understand, but generally this was not a problem. Audio sync was not an issue with this transfer.
The musical score is a little overbearing and if anything could be described as stereotypical for this age and genre of movie.
As the audio tracks present are only mono, there was no use made of the surround channels or the subwoofer.
Dialogue | |
Audio Sync | |
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
Surround Channel Use | |
Subwoofer | |
Overall |
The menu system is static and silent.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The Region 1 version of this DVD misses out on;
The Region 4 version of this DVD misses out on;
Both versions are essentially the same.
The Evil That Men Do is not one of Charles Bronson's classics. It is an entertaining movie, although a little dated. The movie has been given a reasonable transfer to DVD.
Video | |
Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | Sony DVP-S525, using S-Video output |
Display | Bang & Olufsen BeoVision Avante 82cm 16:9 Widescreen. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
Audio Decoder | Denon AVR-1803. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. |
Amplification | Denon AVR 1803 |
Speakers | Paradigm: Phantom Version 3 Front, Jensen SPX-13 Centre, Jensen SPX-5 Rear, Jensen SPX-17 Sub |