Antwone Fisher (Rental) (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	115:19
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Denzel Washington
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Derek Luke Denzel Washington Joy Bryant Novella Nelson Salli Richardson Malcolm David Kelley Cory Hodges
Case	?
RPI	Rental	Music	Mychael Danna

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    This movie is based on a true story, with the screenplay written by Antwone Fisher himself. Now you would expect that this would mean that we get a very true and accurate account of Antwone Fisher's life, which makes it interesting when in the final credits you find the disclaimer "Antwone Fisher's screenplay was inspired by his life. Some of the characters and events depicted in this film are fictional". I guess that real life just isn't exciting enough for Hollywood, hence the need to add some fictional characters and events to spice up the story.

    The plot is fairly simple. When Antwone Fisher (Derek Luke) assaults a shipmate he is referred to a Navy psychiatrist, Dr. Jerome Davenport (Denzel Washington), to be evaluated. Initially Fisher refuses to talk to the doctor about his problems, but Davenport isn't going to let him get away with this. Davenport tells him that he has just three sessions to do his evaluation but he's not going to start counting until Fisher actually talks to him. After many weeks of sitting in the doctor's office saying nothing, he eventually gives in (you knew he would, didn't you?). Once he starts talking, bit by bit the doctor extracts his life story; Fisher was born in a women's prison and given up by his mother at two months of age. He hasn't seen her since. His father was killed by his girlfriend just after he was born. Davenport insightfully asks Fisher "How does that make you feel, Antwone?

    As his story unfolds as a result of  the doctor's gentle probing, we learn that Antwone was fostered together with two other children by Mrs. Tate (Novella Nelson). Mrs. Tate, despite appearing to be a God-fearing Christian, is in fact about as abusive as anyone could be, tying the children to a post and beating them and torturing young Antwone with fire. That is, until the day that Antwone is big enough to defend himself and finds himself thrown out by Mrs. Tate. By this point, Davenport has used up his three sessions and sends his patient off to the Gym to take his anger problem out on a punching bag, together with a recommendation that he should get another chance. Before long, Antwone's back in the doctor's office, having beaten up yet another shipmate. It seems the good doctor hasn't cured him yet!

    In very predictable fashion, Fisher's life, as depicted here, is full of ups and downs. One moment we find him full of anger punching up one of his shipmates due to some perceived slight and the next he is shy, tender and very naive around his girlfriend, Cheryl (Joy Bryant). Somehow though, in true Hollywood style, you know it's all going to work out in the end.

    Derek Luke provides a very believable performance in his movie debut. Denzel Washington provides a workman-like effort in his directorial debut.  Antwone Fisher was an OK movie, definitely not brilliant, and certainly too predictable for my liking. 

Video

    This transfer is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced.

    The picture is very sharp but is occasionally marred by some mild edge enhancement. The shadow detail is more than adequate for the task in this mostly well lit production. No low level noise was evident.

    Here we have a movie which utilises a full colour palette and I'm happy to say that it has been faithfully captured in the transfer and is accurately rendered on the screen without any sign of any colour bleeding.. Skin tones were also quite natural.

    There were no compression artefacts to speak of and I also didn't note any aliasing. There was, however, one instance of moire at 12:30. I didn't spot any film artefacts either, which is what I would expect from such a recent production.

    A single English for the Hearing Impaired subtitle stream is provided. A 10 minute sample showed this to be just about word perfect with only very minor deviations from the dialogue. The subtitles are displayed in white text which is well timed and easy to read. It's a pity they didn't utilise the black bar at the bottom of the screen rather than having the text superimposed on the picture.

    This disc is a single sided single layered disc so there are no layer change issues to be concerned about.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    A single English Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track is provided on this rental disc.

    I'm happy to report that the dialogue was mostly clear, however there were two instances when I didn't catch exactly what a character said the first time around and had to replay a few seconds of the movie in order to have another listen. These instance were a result of the character's accent rather than being a problem with the transfer.

    I wasn't aware of any particular problems in the audio sync department.

    There wasn't a lot of music in this production, or at least what there was was so unobtrusive that it didn't leave any lasting impression on me. Mychael Danna's score was mostly quiet and introspective and really didn't add anything to the story as far as I was concerned.

    The surround channels are not used in any significant way with their activity limited to providing ambience and for the musical score. This is a dialogue-driven story, so most of the audio activity is directed from the centre channel.

    The subwoofer is only used on a couple of occasions to support the musical score.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    No extras have been included on this rental disc.

Menu

    The menu, which is displayed in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced, is static and without any audio.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on:

• Audio commentary by director Denzel Washington and producer Todd Black
• "Meeting Antwone Fisher" featurette
• Making of featurette
• "Hollywood and the Navy" featurette
• Dolby Digital 5.1 French Audio
• Dolby Digital 2.0 Spanish Audio

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on:

• Nothing

    At this point the best disc to have is the R1 but keep in mind that we are not really comparing apples with apples here as the R4 is a rental-only disc. Hopefully when the sell-through version arrives it will contain all the features present on the R1 release.

    Watching Antwone Fisher  wasn't a bad way to spend a Saturday evening, with both the lead actors putting in strong and believable performances. The story which was based on the life of Antwone Fisher was very predictable with the ultimate happy ending coming as no great surprise.

    The video quality was excellent.

    The audio quality was also excellent.

    There are no extras on this rental disc. Hopefully, there will be some on the sell-through version

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall