Extremely Dangerous (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	199:19 (Case: 220)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Sallie Aprahamian
Studio Distributor	Time Life	Starring	Sean Bean Juliet Aubrey Ralph Brown Alex Norton Sean Gallagher Anthony Booth William Chubb Ron Donachie Douglas Rao Nicholas Day Nitin Ganatra Pandora Colin Glyn Owen
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Dual
RPI	?	Music	Rupert Gregson-Williams

    These days Sean Bean is a very well recognised movie star, having played an important role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and being in a number of other recent films. Back in 1999, he had played two parts in well known movies, being a Bond baddie in Goldeneye and also a small part in Ronin. Other than those he had mostly appeared in English television productions such as the Sharpe series. The 1999 production for Granada Television features Bean in the leading role and is a mini-series. It is presented here as four fifty minute episodes but I suspect it may have originally screened as two longer episodes. I am basing this assumption on the fact that during episode 1 on Disc 2 there is an 'End of Part One' title along with an 'End of Part Two" title during the second episode. Strangely nothing like that appears during the episodes on the first disc. I am not aware of it showing on television in Australia, but it may have at some point since it was made.

    Extremely Dangerous is somewhat reminiscent of The Fugitive especially early on, as it starts with a convict escaping during transport by train. The convict who escapes is Neil Byrne (Bean) who has been convicted of brutally murdering his own wife and child. His plan is to track down the killers of his family and prove his innocence. The similarities probably end at that point as it quickly becomes obvious that Byrne is no babe in the woods and obviously has been involved in some way with all manner of unsavoury activities. His escape gets the interest of everyone from the Prison Service (obviously), to the police where he escapes, MI5 and the criminal underworld. During the course of the 3 and a half hour show, details of who he really is are slowly revealed along with clues to the mystery he is trying to unravel. The solution seems to revolve around a paperback novel he is carrying with him.

    This is an intriguing and entertaining mini-series although the story can be quite hard to follow at times, which not assisted by some fairly hard to understand dialogue (subtitles, please!). Bean is very good in the lead role but the rest of the cast is underwhelming, with the exception of Juliet Aubrey as female gangster, Annie and Ralph Brown as gang boss Joe Conner. One of the issues I think is that the law officers pursuing Byrne are a little underwritten and underplayed.

    Recommended (as a rental) for fans of Sean Bean and viewers who enjoy English television thrillers.

Video

    The video quality is average.

    The feature is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, non-16x9 enhanced, which is (I would guess) the original aspect ratio.

    The picture was not overly clear and sharp although there was no evidence of low level noise. Grain on the other hand was obvious throughout and worse in darker scenes despite the healthy bitrate. Some scenes included mild macro-blocking in the background. The shadow detail was pretty poor.

    The colour was reasonable although there was some light colour bleeding.

    Artefacts included some aliasing, especially on Venetian blinds, some edge enhancement, evidence of excessive noise reduction and one blob of white at 24:20 in episode 1.

    There are no subtitles, which would have certainly been very helpful.

    The layer changes must have been between the episodes.
    

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is surprisingly good except for the dialogue.

    This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo soundtrack encoded at 192 Kb/s. The soundtrack is surprisingly spacious when played using Dolby Pro Logic II with good front separation along with lots of rear atmosphere.

    Dialogue was quite hard to understand at times with a combination of accents, mumbling and bad mixing all being part of the issue. There was no problem with audio sync.

    The score of this film by Rupert Gregson-Williams is modern, sometimes techno-ish and quite dramatic. Popular songs are also well used.

    The surround speakers provided quite a lot of atmosphere for a 2.0 soundtrack and the sub was also well used for music and tension.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Nothing.

Menu

    The menu design is simple but effective with an intro and utilising some motifs from the film along with music.

    There is a Region 1 NTSC version of this show which I would guess has even worse video quality considering it would have been converted from the original PAL.

    The video quality is average.

    The audio quality is surprisingly good except for the dialogue.

    No extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall