Disorganized Crime (1989)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1989
Running Time	97:10
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Jim Kouf
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Hoyt Axton Corbin Bernsen Rubén Blades Fred Gwynne Ed O'Neill Lou Diamond Phillips Daniel Roebuck William Russ
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$14.95	Music	David Newman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/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 French Spanish Swedish Norwegian Danish Finnish French Titling Spanish Titling	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    I like a good caper film. A film that shows a mastermind deciding upon a target, choosing his team, then planning, preparing, and executing a daring crime, usually a robbery of some kind. Films like The Italian Job, The Thomas Crown Affair (both versions), Rififi, Entrapment, heck, even Mission: Impossible. This is a decent caper film, with a couple of amusing twists.

    You have to feel sorry for this film's mastermind, Frank Salazar (Corbin Bernsen). He has selected his target — the bank in a small town in Montana. He has carefully chosen his team: a safe cracker, Nick Bartkowski (William Ross), an explosives (and alarms) specialist, Max Green (Fred Gwynne), a wheel man, Ray Forgy (Lou Diamond Phillips), and a weapons guy, Carlos Barrios (Rubén Blades). He sends off letters inviting them to join him, and what happens? A pair of detectives from Newark show up and arrest him. That's a pain!

    So now the team is arriving (with matching duffle bags), but the mastermind is missing. The narrative splits in two at this point, as we trace the two detectives, George (Ed O'Neill) and Bill (Daniel Roebuck), taking Frank back to New Jersey, while the members of the team chafe at Frank's absence, and snap at one another. Then Frank escapes from the detectives, and that part of the narrative becomes two threads, one following Frank, and one the detectives.

    Things get especially interesting when the team finds Frank's notes on the job, and decides to pull off the bank robbery without Frank...

    This is quite a reasonable comedy, but it's still a B movie (the cast gives that away, even if the production values didn't). Even so, it's entertaining to watch, and most of the comedy works, even though a lot of it is fairly ordinary "city folks versus country folks" stuff.

Video

    This transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced. That's the original aspect ratio, and the one most often used with Panaflex cameras (at least this time the credits say "Panaflex cameras from Panavision").

    The image is mostly fairly sharp and clear, with no trace of edge enhancement. There's good shadow detail. There's a fairly consistent level of light film grain, but it doesn't stop you enjoying the film. There's no trace of low-level noise.

    Colour is fairly well-rendered, with everything looking natural, but just a little washed out or dusty. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are plenty of film artefacts — no film restoration here — but they are almost all tiny flecks, cuts, and specks. There's a notable black dot (with a white border — an edge-enhanced artefact!) at 1:16, during the credits. On the whole, however, the level of artefacting is not enough to interfere with appreciating the film.

    There is minor aliasing, but it is not distracting. There's no significant moire, and no noticeable MPEG artefacts.

    There are subtitles in seven languages, including English, and hearing impaired captions in English. I watched the English captions: they are easy to read, well-timed to the dialogue, and somewhat abbreviated, but no more inaccurate than usual.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered. That means there is no layer change. Given that this disc contains just the movie and a basic menu, the single layer suffices.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English, French, and Spanish. I only listened to the English, which is Dolby Digital 5.1 (384 kbps).

    The dialogue is generally clear, but a few lines are a bit mumbled, although still comprehensible; there's a moment of distortion on a shouted line at 16:32, but that's the only one I noticed. There are no obvious audio sync issues.

    David Newman provides the score. It sounds like Western music, but somewhat urban Western music — the closing theme is strongly reminiscent of The Magnificent Seven.

    The surrounds are not used much — the sound is mostly frontal. Not too surprising, given that the credits list this as Dolby Stereo. The subwoofer is used a bit more than I'd have expected, but it wouldn't be missed if you don't have one.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There are no extras. This is a discount disc, but you'd think they could at least scare up a trailer, or some bios.

Menu

    The menus are simple, static and silent. It's not like there's much for the menus to offer...

    The Region 1 disc came out in 2002. It is a discount disc, just like the Region 4. As far as I can ascertain, it has the same (lack of) extras and the same 16x9 enhanced widescreen transfer. Unlike the R4, however, the R1 disc only has a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack, rather the a 5.1, but the 5.1 soundtrack isn't a surround spectacular, so I wouldn't count this as a distinctive difference. I couldn't find a definitive description of the R1 transfer, but I get the impression that it's no better than the transfer on the R4. I'm calling this one a draw for lack of any information either way.

    An entertaining B movie on a bare-bones disc.

    The video quality is good enough.

    The audio quality is good enough.

    I can't find the extras on this disc...

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall