Assassins (1995)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Biographies-Cast & Crew Production Notes
Rating
Year Of Production	1995
Running Time	127
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Richard Donner
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Sylvester Stallone Antonio Banderas Julianne Moore
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$24.95	Music	Mark Mancina

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/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 Arabic English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Robert accepts one final contract; to kill the seller and the buyers of some intercepted information on computer disc. The seller is Electra (Julianne Moore), and the price is $2,000,000. Once again, Miguel Bain beats Robert to the sellers, but Robert refuses to kill Electra, and escapes with her. The price of the disc goes up to $20,000,000, which incidentally Electra reads off the screen as $25,000,000, a subtle continuity fault. The price is paid, but not before Robert Rath himself becomes the target.

    There is action aplenty in the movie, and quite an intriguing storyline to boot. The stunts are tremendous, and the characters are also quite well-developed and intriguing. Antonio Banderas is excellent as an unhinged killer who wants to become "number one" - by killing Robert Rath if necessary. Sylvester Stallone is uncharacteristically profound in his role, and uncharacteristically easy to understand. There are many twists and turns to the plot, which is actually very clever, and it will keep you guessing until the very end. Several surprises await you at the end of the movie, where a number of mysterious loose ends are tied up. Overall, this is a very satisfying movie from both the action and the storyline point of view.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced. The entire frame is used for a lot of this movie, especially the computer graphics, where I found that the edges of the displays were being cut off. This, unfortunately, is the result of horizontal overscan in my display device, so I cannot comment on whether or not the framing was appropriate or not, given that the original aspect ratio of this movie was 1.85:1. We are either getting slightly less of the edges or slightly more of the top and bottom of the screen. I moved the horizontal position around a bit, and it seems as if at least the left edge of the picture is fully intact, though I am not sure about the right side.

    The transfer was very sharp at all times. Shadow detail was mostly superb, but with the odd scene here and there lacking a little in shadow detail. No low level noise was present.

    The colours were nicely rendered in this transfer, ranging from muted and sedate in the darker scenes to vivid and vibrant in the higher lit sequences.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts were virtually non-existent, with occasional small amounts of aliasing being present here and there. Film artefacts were common in the first five minutes, but then settled down to the occasional spot or scratch here and there.

Audio

    Dialogue was clear all of the time, even from Sylvester Stallone.

    The music is tremendous at creating atmosphere in this movie. It is often present, and is quite strident and percussive at times, all very appropriate for the on-screen action. It is aggressively mixed into the surround channels, creating a superbly enveloping soundtrack.

     The surround channels were moderately heavily used for music, effects and some ambience. The music in particular helped to give a nearly continuous surround presence. Coupled with the aggressive mix of the action sequences into the surrounds, this made for a superbly enveloping surround experience.

    The .1 channel was used for the music and for effects. It was moderately heavily used.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Production Notes

Cast & Crew Biographies

    The Region 4 version of this DVD misses out on;

• Fullscreen version

    The Region 1 version of this DVD misses out on;

• Nothing

    There is no compelling reason to prefer one version over the other.

    The video quality has a number of minor problems early on, but then settles down to be an excellent transfer.

    The audio quality is very good with clear dialogue and a nicely enveloping surround presence.

    The extras are very limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall