The Emerald Forest (Madman) (1985)

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General		Extras
Category	Action Adventure	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1985
Running Time	109:03 (Case: 114)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (60:22)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	John Boorman
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Powers Boothe Meg Foster Yara Vaneau William Rodriguez Estee Chandler Charley Boorman Dira Paes Eduardo Conde Ariel Coelho Peter Marinker Mario Borges Átila Iório
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$19.95	Music	Brian Gascoigne Junior Homrich

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	Finnish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Ripe to be retitled "National Geographic: The Movie", The Emerald Forest is the tale of an engineer named Bill Markham (Powers Boothe) whose young son Tommy is taken by an indigenous tribe. Spending all his spare time searching the jungle, ten years later Bill finds his son, who is now a young man (Charlie Boorman, now better known as Ewan McGregor's motorbike buddy) and a fully fledged member of the tribe. The reunification sees Bill discover many of the ancient traditions of the tribe and become painfully aware of the damage big city life is doing to the jungle and its inhabitants. Cue the scantily clad natives, stunning nature photography and plenty of spear verses gun battles.

    The Emerald Forest was a critically and commercially successful pet project for notable (and notably erratic) English director John Boorman, who is better known for (the true classic) Deliverance, (the ever overrated) Excalibur and (so bad it's hilarious) The Excorcist II. Boorman has tread between commercial and arthouse sensibilities throughout his career, frequently attempting to mix the two. For my money, The Emerald Forest is his most successful combination of the two. The film uses a tightly structured and well paced adventure story to hold together all manner of artistic indulgences. It even manages to bang the "Save The Rainforests" drum pretty loudly without sounding particularly patronising or insincere.

    The film has aged surprisingly well. Coupled with the stunning look of the transfer offered on this disc, The Emerald Forest is easy to recommend to almost any audience.

Video

    The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The video on offer is stunning, particularly for a 25 year old film. In fact the film has been given a better transfer than most brand spanking new films are afforded. The film features a good deal of stunning photography and it has all been near-flawlessly digitised.

    The image is clear and sharp, with an incredibly fine level of filmic grain present. The colours look spectacular, particularly the lush shades of green and golden sun. There is a stunning level of shadow detail visible.

    There are no compression artefacts or undue noise visible in the video. I counted precisely three minute specs of dust in the image throughout the whole film.

    This is an RSDL disc with a layer break, occurring seamlessly between scenes at 60:22.

    The film features bold white English subtitles for the non-English parts of the movie, save for one oddly placed subtitle early in the film, the subtitles seem accurate and are well paced.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The film features a single English/Portuguese/Indigenous Brazillian Dolby Digital 2.0 (224 Kbps) audio track, which is an accurate representation of the film's original audio.

    The audio track is a little heavy in the mid-range frequencies, but generally sounds good. The audio is reasonably clear, the dialogue is easy to understand and it all appears to be well synchronised to the video.

    The film's score could pretty much be described as Vangelis with a layer of jungle drums (although it was actually composed by Brian Gascoigne and Junior Homrich). It sounds a little dated, but fits the tone of the film well.

    There is no surround activity at all, although there is a moderate level of bottom end that reaches subwoofer levels.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Nothing at all, unless you want to count an animated menu. I don't.

    The Region 1 edition features a theatrical trailer for the film, as well as French and Spanish subtitles that are not on the Region 4 edition, but misses the Finnish subtitle track.

    Stunning photography is the highlight of this engaging jungle adventure movie. The Emerald Forest is a minor classic, and one that has aged far better than most "message" movies, thanks largely to its strong narrative.

    The video on offer is stunning - a reference transfer for an older film. The audio is basic, but clean and clear. There are no extras on this disc.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall