Breakout (1975)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Action	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1975
Running Time	92:48
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Tom Gries
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Charles Bronson Robert Duvall Jill Ireland John Huston Randy Quaid Sheree North Emilio Fernandez Paul Mantee Alan Vint Alejandro Rey
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Jerry Goldsmith

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)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	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

    Charles Buchinski better known as Charles Bronson churned out some remarkable movies during his 81 years covering genres from western to wartime. The film that made him famous for a second time in his career was of course Death Wish in 1974. In fact it was such a hit there was another 4 in the series with Death Wish V: The Face of Death being released some twenty years later.

    Breakout is set in Mexico in 1971 and as the name suggests it involves a jail break of sorts. I can even remember a few years ago when this style of jail break was attempted in the USA the movie copped a lot of flak for showing how to launch such an attempt.

    Jay Wagner (Robert Duvall) is framed for murder and his wife Ann (Jill Ireland) wants to spring him out of jail. The problem is everything she has tried has met with failure and it's as if someone is passing on the information to the officials.

    Nick Colton (Charles Bronson) is a small time pilot for Hawkin's Flying Service. You get the impression that to pass the time Nick and his partner Hawk (Randy Quaid) will attempt any adventure if there is money to be made. The latest adventure of smoking fish does not work out too well so it is rather fortunate to have Ann turn up demanding the services of a pilot.

    The three set about working on a foolproof plan to get Jay out of jail.

    Just as a side note: Jill was Charles' real wife at the time, and they starred together in 16 movies. This movie does seem conscious of his lack of height, as he is often well away from the other actors in any scene showing a full body shot. He's only close to the others when the legs are not shown.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    Considering the age of the film the quality is remarkable. There are frequent problems during the credits, but this is typical of most films with a bit of age. Once the opening credits have finished the image takes on a higher quality. While the image is not sharp the edges are well defined. With one exception at 82:43, which is a night scene anyway, shadow detail is not really a problem. There is some low level noise but it is relatively minor with the exception of 77:10.

    The colours are typical of the timeline and location, with bright colours being rare. The clothes worn by Ann and Myrna (Sheree North) are probably the most lively examples you will see in the production. There were no irregularities with the colour rendition of this transfer - just don't expect any splashes of bright primary colours.

    There were no MPEG artefacts that I noticed. Aliasing is very rare and very mild when it does occur. Film artefacts are quite common; as mentioned earlier, the beginning credits are the worst, then it reduces considerably after the first 20 minutes of the feature. From that point on they are very small and not distracting at all. They make a slight reappearance again from 60:00 until the end.

    There are a large number of subtitle tracks which should cater for most requirements.

    This disc is a single-layered disc so therefore there is no layer change to worry about.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are five audio tracks on this DVD. The default is an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. The other tracks are also Dolby Digital 2.0 for French, German, Italian and Spanish. I listened to the English track.

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times with no hiss. The only problem was the recording level, which was rather low compared with most titles. Once you spin the volume dial way up to a different "baseline" volume everything is fine.

    Audio sync was out at 10:05.

    The musical score, by Jerry Goldsmith, was ideally suited to the movie.

    The surround channels and subwoofer are not used by this soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on:

• Nothing

• Subtitles for Dutch, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish

    The video quality is acceptable even with the film artefact problems.

    The audio is bare bones, being a 2.0 soundtrack. But rarely do your ears seem to want any more with this flick anyway. What is included is of quite good quality.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall