The Siege (1998) |
BUY IT |
General | Extras | ||
Category | Thriller |
Featurette-Making Of Theatrical Trailer |
|
Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 1998 | ||
Running Time | 111:15 | ||
RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (69:05) | Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Menu | ||
Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Edward Zwick |
Studio
Distributor |
Twentieth Century Fox |
Starring |
Denzel Washington Annette Bening Bruce Willis Tony Shalhoub Sami Bouajila David Proval |
Case | Amaray-Transparent | ||
RPI | $29.95 | Music | Graeme Revell |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None | English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) | |
Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | ||
16x9 Enhancement |
|
||
Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | Miscellaneous | |
Jacket Pictures | No | ||
Subtitles |
Czech Danish English for the Hearing Impaired Finnish Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish |
Smoking | Yes |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | No |
The NSA is also carrying out its own investigation in an effort to find the terrorists. NSA agent Elise Kraft (Annette Bening) clearly has more background information on who the terrorists are, but when she fails to co-operate with Anthony, he arrests her for interfering and withholding information from an FBI investigation. Eventually, Elise is more forthcoming and helps Anthony get a better idea of who they are dealing with and why.
Bruce Willis' part as Army General William Devereaux is much smaller than both Denzel Washington's and Annette Bening's, but he still plays a crucial role in the story and gets more screen time towards the end of the film.
The transfer is very sharp and clear at all times, with plenty of detail present. The shadow detail is also very good when the cinematography allows it to be, but overall most scenes exhibit a quick smooth transition to black.
The colour is rich and deeply saturated. There are a couple of scenes early on in the movie where the colour appears to be ever so slightly flat and muted, but I expect that this has to do with the way it was filmed or the location rather than the transfer itself.
No grain or pixelization was noticed.
There were no MPEG artefacts seen. Aliasing was very rare and always extremely mild when it did occur. The most frequent culprit was car chrome, examples being at 1:43, 4:05, 7:47, 17:09 and 61:39. There are a reasonable number of film artefacts, but they are always small and unobtrusive, so they never become distracting. It is worth mentioning that there is some very severe but seemingly intentional moiré effects on any TV footage.
This disc is an RSDL disc, but the layer change is so perfectly placed and timed that I did not see it when I was watching the movie. It is totally transparent even when you know where it is. This is one of the best-placed layer changes I have come across. Without my Sony's layer display feature I would have never found the layer change, which occurs in Chapter 18, at 69:05, which is on a scene change.
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
The dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout the movie. There are a couple of occasions where the dialogue sounded distorted, such as at 66:00 and 100:13. These occurrences are far from being severe, but they are certainly noticeable. This distortion was also present in my VHS version of this movie, so this is not a transfer problem.
Audio sync was not a problem at all with this transfer, and was completely spot on.
Graeme Revell's music score suits the movie well. In particular, the main theme music is great, as it adds to the on-screen action.
The surround channels were used frequently which created a good sound envelope for most of the movie, but there are the odd occasions where the soundfield collapses to just the front soundstage. Overall, the surround speakers were mostly used for music and ambient sounds, but there is a good splattering of special effects present too, some of which are directional. There are also several occasions where the left and right front speakers are used to create localized effects. This use further enhances the soundstage. There are many occasions where you are totally immersed in an enveloping soundstage such as at 5:07, 18:08, 23:53, 24:28, 75:50, 77:45, 78:45, 96:45 and 104:36.
For most of the movie, the subwoofer does not have a lot to do, but there are several scenes where it becomes highly active and really adds to the bottom end.
Dialogue | |
Audio Sync | |
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
Surround Channel Use | |
Subwoofer | |
Overall |
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The picture quality is excellent.
The soundtrack is very good, with no real problems.
The extras are limited.
Video | |
Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | Sony DVP-725, using Component output |
Display | Sony Projector VPH-G70 (No Line Doubler), Technics Da-Lite matt screen with gain of 1.0 (229cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
Audio Decoder | Built in to DVD player. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
Amplification | Onkyo TX-SV919THX |
Speakers | Fronts: Energy RVS-1 (3), Rears: Energy RVSS-1 (2), Subwoofer: Energy EPS-150 (1) |