No Way Out (1987)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Theatrical Trailer Booklet
Rating
Year Of Production	1987
Running Time	109:24 (Case: 114)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (68:19)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Roger Donaldson
Studio Distributor	Neufeld-Ziskin Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Kevin Costner Gene Hackman Sean Young Will Patton Howard Duff Jason Bernard
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$36.95	Music	Maurice Jarre

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/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 English for the Hearing Impaired German German for the Hearing Impaired French Italian Spanish Dutch Swedish Finnish Norwegian Danish Portuguese Polish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, at start of credits

    All I will say about No Way Out is that it is a suspense/thriller/romance which stars Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young, Will Patton and Howard Duffhas.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced, despite a claim to the contrary on the DVD's packaging.

    Foreground sharpness and detail is great and the background detail is good too. If the picture didn't alias as much and had less film artefacts, this transfer would have received a 4 star rating with no problem, but alas it wasn't to be. There is good shadow detail when required and the picture looks natural and well balanced throughout. Apart from some deliberately added low-level noise on a TV set, no low-level noise was noticed. No edge enhancement or edge bleeding was noticed either. The picture looks great in these departments.

    The colour is beautiful, with rich natural-looking skin tones. I was amazed at how good the colour and the overall picture was on more than one occasion. Of course, the colour isn't quite as vibrant as most of the films made in the late 90s, but we cannot expect it to be.

    There are two types of grain in this transfer. Both appear to be largely film-induced. The first type is trivial and is present for almost the entire film. There are, however, a couple of sequences where it totally disappears. The second type is much more noticeable and distracting. The opening credits show a perfect example of this, between 0:20 - 2:30. Thankfully this type of grain is reasonably rare. Scenes with sky in them were always affected (e.g. 39:00), but at least this is a largely indoor movie.

    No MPEG artefacts were noticed. Now, onto this transfer's biggest problem - aliasing and moiré artefacts. Each time the camera moved or there was some chrome on the screen, the picture usually suffered from strong aliasing or moiré artefacts. These aliasing and moiré artefacts strike very regularly. The worst cases can be found at 22:05 - 22:22, 31:12, 35:55 - 36:15, 37:47 - 37:52 and 46:05. The great news here is that if you are using a progressive scan DVD player, it all just disappears. Even the worst scenes are rock-solid with no trace of aliasing or moiré to be found.

    After 55:17 there is some minor vertical telecine wobble, but it is enough to be distracting when the camera is stationary. Another telecine wobble occurs at 31:24, this time horizontally, which is much more noticeable.

    The preponderance of film artefacts is yet another area where this transfer lets us down somewhat. There are a really large number of small film artefacts scattered throughout the entire movie. For some strange reason I didn't find these small film artefact distracting at all. There are also quite a few medium-sized and large film artefacts present, which were certainly distracting at times.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change occurring in Chapter 18, at 68:19 on a scene change. Its placement is excellent and I almost did not notice it. So, this a very good layer change that does not disrupt the flow of the movie.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The dialogue was extremely clear and easy to understand throughout the entire movie. When the actors really yelled the dialogue got a little distorted, such as at 15:00, 18:22 and 74:19. There were a couple of really tiny pops and clicks in the soundtrack, but they were nothing to worry about.

    No audio sync problems were noticed with this transfer.

    Maurice Jarre's music score was excellent and had me on the edge of my set the first time I saw this movie.

    The surround mix is good and it supports the movie well. The surround speakers are mostly used for some low-level background effects and musical ambience. There are a couple of key sequences that totally envelop you in music and subtle effects. On a couple of occasions, the centre channel seemed to be over-utilised for effects which narrowed the front stage noticeably, but there were only a couple of instances of this.

    The subwoofer was used on many occasions to add some extra punch to the music, especially during the more dramatic sequences.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The Scene Selection menu has an index, which makes jumping to any chapter quick and easy.

Theatrical Trailer (1:28 minutes)

Booklet

• Additional Pan & Scan version.

• Higher 224Kb/s Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtracks
• German and Italian soundtracks
• Lots of subtitles

    The picture quality is merely acceptable if you don't have a progressive scan DVD player because of all the aliasing and moiré artefacts. If you have a progressive scan DVD player then the picture quality is rather good.

    The audio quality is good, pretty much your standard Dolby Digital surround-encoded soundtrack.

    The extras are limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall