The Distinguished Gentleman (1992)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1992
Running Time	107:46
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (53:58)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Jonathan Lynn
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Eddie Murphy Lane Smith Sheryl Lee Ralph Joe Don Baker Victoria Rowell Grant Shaud Kevin McCarthy Charles Dutton Victor Rivers Chi McBride Sonny Jim Gaines Noble Willingham Gary Frank
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Randy Edelman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Arabic Bulgarian Danish Spanish French Dutch Norwegian Portuguese Russian Finnish Swedish Spanish Titling French Titling	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, end credits over various images

    The Distinguished Gentleman is one of my favourite Eddie Murphy movies. It's definitely not highbrow, but it's basically Eddie doing what he does best, playing a street smart and wise-cracking rascal.

    Thomas Jefferson Johnson (Eddie Murphy) is a con-man specialising in blackmailing people who ring up his phone sex service. It's quite an elaborate con.

    His cousin Loretta (Sheryl Lee Ralph) provides the "service", and the gang then uses the victim-supplied credit card number to find out where the victim lives. Loretta turns up at the victim's house and threatens exposure. Armando (Victor Rivers) also turns up as the jealous Latin lover, and finally Thomas appears pretending to be a cop. By the end of it, the victim is all-too-happy to pay some money to hush the whole thing up.

    The latest victim is Zeke Bridges (Noble Willingham) who just happens to be the CEO of a large insurance company hosting a fundraising party for popular congressman Jeff Johnson (James Garner). Thomas overhears a conversation whilst at Zeke's house which implies that the congressmen and senators in Washington are playing an even bigger con and getting away with it because it's all legal. Thomas is intrigued and wants a piece of the action.

    His chance comes when Jeff Johnson dies of a heart attack in the service of his country - not to mention whilst "servicing" his personal assistant Kimberley (Sarah Carson). Thomas decides to run as a congressman by using his middle name. By running as "Jeff Johnson", he's hoping most people will just vote for him due to "name recognition."

    Not too surprising, he manages to get in. Johnson and co. arrive at Washington to realize they are but amateurs compared to seasoned politicians. Thomas manages to become the prodigy of Senator Dick Dodge (Lane Smith), the master con of them all, and soon learns all the dirty tricks of how to milk money out of lobbyists.

    Everything is going fine until Thomas meets a pretty environmentalist named Celia Kirby (Victoria Rowell). Will he be forced to gain a conscience in order to win her favour? Thomas also discovers politics is a very dirty business indeed, and the only way he can redeem himself is to pull the biggest con of his life.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. This is also the intended aspect ratio, based on a 35mm film source.

    Despite the age of the film, this is a good transfer. The film source is clean, and grain is minimal.

    Detail levels are good, and the overall transfer has a high contrast look and I suspect the contrast has been digitally enhanced. Colour saturation is also good, with lots of vivid colours in evidence.

    I did not detect any signs of compression artefacts or edge enhancement.

    There are quite a few subtitle tracks: English, English for the Hearing Impaired, Arabic, Bulgarian, Danish, Spanish, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Finnish, Swedish, Spanish Titling, and French Titling. Both the English subtitle tracks appear to be exactly the same, apart from the occasional non-dialogue transcription for the latter.

    This is a single sided dual layered disc (RSDL). The layer change occurs in Chapter 8 at 53:58. It occurs during a natural pause over some dead birds, so should be unnoticeable.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are three audio tracks on this disc: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s), Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s), and French Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s).

    I was surprised to see the original Dolby Stereo soundtrack remastered for 5.1, and the higher encoding bitrate has been used on all audio tracks.

    As you would expect from the use of the higher encoding bitrate, there is a pleasantly full "body" to the sound, and extended frequency response/dynamics, not to mention low level detail and ambience.

    However, I did not really notice any significant usage of the surround channels, and the subwoofer seemed pretty quiet.

    Dialogue quality was good, and I did not notice any issues with audio synchronization.

    The original music score is by Randy Edelman, and is typical comedy orchestral music, with lots of fanfare.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There are no extras. The menus are 16x9 enhanced but static. They are available in several languages.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on:

• Non 16x9 enhanced widescreen transfer
• English and French Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded audio tracks
• Theatrical trailer

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on:

• Widescreen 16x9 enhanced transfer
• English, French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) audio tracks

    The 16x9 enhanced transfer plus the remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks make R4 the clear winner, although some extras would have been nice.

    The Distinguished Gentleman may not be Eddie Murphy's best movie, but it's enjoyable nevertheless. Eddie Murphy plays a small time con man who decided to join the world's biggest con game by becoming a Congressman!

    The video transfer quality is good.

    The audio transfer quality is good.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall