Out for Justice (1991) |
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General | Extras | ||
Category | Action | None | |
Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 1991 | ||
Running Time | 87:40 | ||
RSDL / Flipper | No/No | Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Programme | ||
Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | John Flynn |
Studio
Distributor |
Warner Home Video |
Starring |
Steven Seagal William Forsythe Jerry Orbach Jo Champa |
Case | Amaray-Transparent | ||
RPI | $24.95 | Music | David Michael Frank |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) |
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Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | ||
16x9 Enhancement |
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Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | Miscellaneous | |
Jacket Pictures | No | ||
Subtitles |
English French Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese German Romanian Bulgarian English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired |
Smoking | Yes |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | No |
If you really need the plot for this non-epic, I would suggest that you look up any of the previous reviews of his films. Doesn't matter which one, the story will be pretty much the same. Hard To Kill or The Glimmer Man will do. Just change the cast a little, change the bad guys a little and you are basically there. This particular incarnation sees Gino Felino (Steven Seagal) hunting down the cold blooded murderer of his cop buddy Bobby Lupo (Joe Spataro) and using it as an excuse to beat the living daylights out of an improbably large number of hood-like characters (without getting a scratch), tossing in a number of gratuitous murders - err, justifiable homicides - of his own. The bad guy in this effort is drug-crazed Richie Madano (William Forsythe). Naturally the good guy wins and the bad guys lose - hey, what else do you expect? Oh sorry, yes there are some decent looking babes to add some floss here and there. And that is about all you have to know about the plot.
And of course given the completely formulaic nature of the patented SS story, we get an equally formulaic display of what in the loosest possible way is described as acting. We all know that SS cannot act to save his life (must have taken lessons from JCVD) but the rest of the cast do their damnedest to prove that lack of acting ability is an absolute requirement for a part in an SS film. Being cynical, the only reason that SS continues to appear in films is because he produces the d*** things. Nothing else about this effort is remotely worth worrying about, as you are not seeing anything remotely close to good film making here.
Even by Steven Seagal's comparatively low standards, this is a pretty poor effort. He did make a couple of better films and they are coming out shortly, so if you really need a fix of Steven Seagal just wait a little while longer and get Under Siege or Under Siege 2. They are demonstrably better incarnations of the patented SS story.
The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and it is (apparently) 16x9 enhanced.
This is an absolute shocker of a transfer for a film of its age. The transfer lacks definition almost throughout the film, with at times an appalling lack of depth to the picture. At one point the background is so out of focus that I swear the bus has a ghost image. To describe this transfer as soft and lacking detail is to seriously understate the situation. This is so bad that there are some quite obvious sequences where even the main action is completely out of focus. If you do not believe me check out the sequence between 37:15 and 37:45 and tell me that you think it is in sharp focus. At times the transfer loses a lot of clarity and becomes quite grainy in appearance. Shadow detail is perversely reasonably decent for some reason. There appear to be no problems with low level noise in the transfer. Overall, I have seen better VHS tapes than this effort.
This presents a decidedly muted palette of colours and is virtually completely lacking in vibrancy. What makes it worse is there are odd occasions when the transfer becomes quite sharp and the colours come up quite well in comparison. You would be hard pushed to find anything that would be classified as oversaturated in this transfer.
There were no MPEG artefacts noted in the transfer. There did not appear to be any significant film-to-video artefacts in the transfer. Mercifully, film artefacts did not appear to be a problem with the transfer.
There are three audio tracks on the DVD: an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, a German Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and a French Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Since I did not feel like being too adventurous, I listened to the English default.
Dialogue was reasonably clear and easy to understand.
There were no apparent audio sync problems with the disc.
The score by David Michael Frank (which sounds like a name someone made up to hide their involvement with the film) is without merit and completely trite.
This is not an especially memorable 5.1 soundtrack other than for how lacking in detail it is. There is barely any action out of the surround channels, especially the rear channels, and the bass channel may as well have been forgotten about completely. Given the preponderance of weapons fire and fighting, I was certainly expecting much more than we got. The sound seems to have been recorded in a muffled room and has no space or bloom to it - it sounds really congested. The resultant soundscape is less than encompassing and this definitely comes across as something you are watching and listening rather than something you are a part of and experiencing.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
A shocker of a video transfer for a film of its age.
A adequate audio transfer.
A non-existent extras package.
And what's wrong with the packaging on this release - apart from being a crappy snapper case? Surprisingly not too much, except for the use of what is presumably a Region 1 screen capture for the menu shot, as it is definitely different wording to that on the actual DVD. (Ed. The case and packaging issues were rectified with the re-release of this DVD in a Transparent Amaray case.)
Video | |
Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | Pioneer DV-515, using S-Video output |
Display | Sony Trinitron Wega (80cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
Amplification | Yamaha RXV-795 |
Speakers | Energy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL |