Final Analysis (1992)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Thriller	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1992
Running Time	119:30 (Case: 125)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (61:20)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Phil Joanou
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Richard Gere Kim Basinger Uma Thurman Eric Roberts
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$24.95	Music	George Fenton

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese German Romanian Bulgarian English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    We next see Isaac rushing off to court to give his medical opinion on Pepe Carrero (Agustin Rodriguez). Pepe has already been found guilty of murdering his father and this hearing is to determine his sentence. Isaac relates Pepe's systematic abuse by his father, which in turn led to Pepe becoming temporarily insane and killing his father. Isaac's testimony convinces the jury that Pepe is not a danger to society, and consequently he avoids a prison sentence. Detective Huggins (Keith David) is not thrilled about this outcome, which sets him up as an adversary of Isaac.

    Heather (Diana's sister) drops by Isaac's office one night to discuss Diana's past. Isaac seems to be immediately drawn to her. Heather leaves, but returns another night, which ends in a steamy bedroom romp. This leads to a relationship, which is complicated by Heather being unhappily married to a gangster named Eric Roberts (Jimmy Evans). Eric doesn't carry a violin case, but does build public housing, which apparently amounts to the same thing in America!

    After Heather kills her husband one night, Isaac learns that she suffers from Pathological Intoxication, which translated into English means that if she has a small amount of alcohol she becomes violent but later on is unable to remember what she has said or done. It is now up to Isaac to save her from a prison sentence.

Video

    The transfer is extremely clear and sharp at all times, with no low level noise present. The shadow detail is very good, but the transfer did seem to be just a tad on the dark side.

    The colours are well saturated and natural looking, although not as lush or vibrant as some of the more recent films I have seen, such as Deep Blue Sea.

    There are some instances of excessive edge enhancement. These occurrences are usually mild, with only a couple of them standing out enough to be distracting. There is also a graininess present in many of the indoor scenes that affected the backgrounds, which I personally find really annoying. This graininess is basically invisible when viewed on a TV set using a composite input.

    Aliasing and moiré effects plague the courtroom and psychiatric hospital visiting room scenes. Both of these rooms have venetian blinds which are strongly back-lit, a dead-sitter for aliasing and moiré artefacts. The worst of these artefacts are seen at 62:20 - 62:38 and 71:03 - 71:30. Apart from the scenes shot in the abovementioned rooms, aliasing is rare and mild when it does occur.

    There are far too many film artefacts for the age of this film. Not a minute goes by without one popping up somewhere on the screen. The film artefacts are mostly small and unobtrusive, but there are also quite a few larger more noticeable ones which are distracting. While we are on the topic of film artefacts, there are a couple of dirty smudge marks at 40:21. They only appear for one or two frames, but they are big enough to be noticed.

    There is a severe problem with two scenes that contain a red bridge, at 39:20 – 39:26 and 39:39 – 39:43. The bridge suffers from what I can only describe as a mixture of pixel crawl and moiré. I re-watched these scenes on my trusty 68cm TV, which uses a composite input. Surprising, it is barely noticeable. So, with this in mind I then tried using the Composite and S-Video signals with the projector, but the alas, the effects are just as severe. Projector owners beware.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change occurring between Chapters 20 and 21, at 61:20. There is a small pause, but due to the scene shift that occurs at this point, it is totally undetectable when watching the movie. This is one of the best placed layer changes I have seen (or not seen) on a Warners disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are three audio tracks on this DVD; English 192Kb/s Dolby Digital 2.0 surround, French 192Kb/s Dolby Digital 2.0 surround and Italian 192Kb/s Dolby Digital 2.0 surround. The default is the English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack which is the one I listened to.

    The surround mix is good, and it supports the movie well. The surround speakers are used for some low level background effects, and for music ambience. The soundfield did not collapse into the centre channel at any time, which generally enhances the quality of the sound. It does however suffer from the usual Dolby Stereo problem of being front-heavy.

    The dialogue was usually clear and easy to understand, and no audio sync problems were noticed with this transfer.

    I did hear some minor distortion in the centre channel at one stage, but it was not too disruptive.

    The musical score is by George Fenton.

    There are not too many sequences that need the subwoofer but when it is needed it is there, adding extra punch to the soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

• Production Notes
• Cast & Crew Biographies

• Widescreen presentation

    The sound quality is good, for a Dolby Stereo (surround) encoded soundtrack.

    There are absolutely no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall