Cruel and Unusual (Watchtower) (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Dolby Digital Trailer-City Theatrical Trailer Filmographies-Cast & Crew Gallery-Photo
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	96:20
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	George Mihalka
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Tom Berenger Rachel Hayward Tygh Runyan
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$39.95	Music	Michel Cusson

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Russian Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/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 French Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Croatian Czech Danish Finnish Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Russian Slovenian Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes, frequently
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, mildly
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Cruel And Unusual was marketed under the name of Watchtower in America, which set off warning bells in my head, simply because when a film's name is changed for "foreign" markets, or the home video market, it's generally not a good sign. Tom Berenger has also been in some pretty abominable films such as The Substitute, but his ability as an actor is greater than such efforts would have you believe, especially in such films as Major League. Unfortunately, Cruel And Unusual is not one of his better films as far as overall quality is concerned, even if he puts in quite an enigmatic performance. He is literally the diamond buried in several feet of cow droppings here.

    The film basically revolves around the O'Conner siblings - Kate (Rachel Hayward) and Mike (Tygh Runyan). Kate is a fisherwoman who is slowly going further and further into bankruptcy, while Mike has tried to move to a different world and gotten himself into a jam in the process. So Mike is back home on probation, while his sister has got him a job at the local lighthouse, and they await the arrival of the new supervisor, a man called Adam Terrell (Eli Gabay). Adam seems like a nice guy at first, but as the film progresses at its languid, almost dead pace, we learn in not-so-subtle steps that he isn't quite what he seems. Herein lies part of the rub - the man that Kate and Mike think is Adam Terrell is actually Art Stoner (Tom Berenger), and it is not spoiling anything to say that Art has killed the real Adam, since the film plays the hand of Art's murderousness within five minutes of the film's beginning.

    So, when Mike starts to find Art's personality a little aggravating, and Kate notices a wanted poster in the bar that looks strangely familiar, well, you can guess the rest. I can see where the unencouraging IMDB rating of 4.1 (out of ten) came from, in all honesty. Most of the film is beautifully shot, with vistas of the land meeting the sea dominating every background, but the photography alone cannot save the film. Tom Berenger was once nominated for an Oscar, so it is rather odd to see him mixed with what is, to be perfectly frank, a cast of nobodies.

    Upon watching the end credits all the way through, I was surprised to discover that this is, in fact, a Canadian film that presumably has been edited for television (this is the only way I can explain the coy approach to the violence).

Video

    Cruel And Unusual is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and it is 16x9 Enhanced.

    This is a pleasant, sharp transfer that allows plenty of detail to shine through, especially in the outdoor shots during the day. The shadow detail is a bit limited, with the darker scenes having a somewhat murky, flat look that reflects the production values. There was no low-level noise.

    The colour palette in this film is fairly subdued, mainly because of the cold, foggy locations that never really allow much colour to shine through on film. The transfer represents this colour scheme without any composite artefacting or colour bleeding.

    MPEG artefacts were not found in this transfer, even though ninety-six minutes of film with three 448 kilobit soundtracks and nineteen subtitle streams is a fairly tight squeeze. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some borderline aliasing, but this artefact was pretty hard to spot on my setup, and gone almost as rapidly as it appeared. Film artefacts were not found in the transfer, save for maybe one or two marks that were hardly noticed.

    There is an English subtitle stream on this DVD, but it simply cannot replace the soundtrack, as there are no sounds described in it and this film has a rather active soundtrack.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are three soundtracks on this DVD, all of which are in Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448 kilobits per second.

    The first, and default, soundtrack is the original English dialogue, with dubs in French and Russian provided for good measure. I stuck with the English version of the film.

    The dialogue is occasionally muffled, but most of the time it is pretty clear and easy to understand. There were no problems with audio sync.

    The score music in this film is credited to Michel Cusson. There are plenty of immersive and atmospheric cues to be found here, which gives some scenes more tension than they really deserve to have. If anything, the score music can be considered the saving grace of this production.

    The surround channels are fairly constantly used to provide an immersive soundfield. Any outdoor sequence, particularly after Tom Berenger arrives at the lighthouse, is filled with the sounds of waves crashing against the beach, or seagulls squawking. These sound effects, which can be heard at such places as 22:19, 35:48, 54:56, or 57:42, are spread throughout the soundfield, almost exactly reproducing what one would hear if they were standing on the beach where the film was shot.

    The subwoofer was used to put a bottom end on the sounds of waves crashing, or the music, but it was not worked overly hard.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is static and silent, but it is 16x9 Enhanced.

Trailer

    A very simple seventy-two second trailer presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo audio.

Filmographies

    Filmographies for director George Mihalka, Tom Berenger, Rachel Hayward, and Tygh Runyan.

Photo Gallery

    A collection of unannotated stills.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Additional Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo English soundtrack
• Spanish subtitles

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• A lot of subtitles

    There really is no compelling reason to favour one version over the other in this case.

    Cruel And Unusual is a very monotonous film, with little to recommend it apart from Tom Berenger's performance as a very one-dimensional serial killer. Since Red Dragon is expected to be released on DVD in the next couple of months, I'd personally recommend waiting for that instead, as this is very mundane by comparison. I really cannot even recommend a rental in this instance, so don't say that I didn't warn you.

    The video transfer is very good.

    The audio transfer is excellent.

    The extras are sparse.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall