Beyond the City Limits (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio & Animation Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	87:38 (Case: 91)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Gigi Gaston
Studio Distributor	Imagine Entertainment	Starring	Jennifer Esposito Alyson Hannigan Steve Harris Natassja Kinski Brian McCardie Todd Field Michael Cole Alexis Denisof Chris Ellis Marcos Ferraez Sophie B Hawkins Toby Huss Freddy Rodriguez
Case	Click
RPI	Rental	Music	Billy White Acre

    Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are often quite interested in movies starring any of the major actors. This film offers a double dose: it stars Alyson Hannigan (Willow), and has a major supporting role for Alexis Denisof (Wesley Wyndham Price, ex-watcher and now rogue demon hunter on Angel). Big fans will be amused by that, because Alyson and Alexis have been an item for the last couple of years. This role is something of a departure for Alyson Hannigan — her role here involves, amongst other things, shooting up with heroin. Then again, she has never been one for taking safe roles. Alexis Denisof gets to play a different role this time, too: in this film he is supposed to be Russian (with his surname you might think he could do a decent Russian accent — it is not that good).

    Buffy isn't the only TV show contributing to this movie, either. Fans of The Practice will recognise Steve Harris (Eugene Young) in another important role.

    This film revolves around three female friends: Lexi (Alyson Hannigan), Misha (Nastassja Kinski), and Helena (Jennifer Esposito), and the men in their lives, including a couple of Russian criminals, Sergei (Brian McCardie) and Yuri (Alexis Denisof), a cop called Jack (Todd Field), and a casino employee called Troy (Steve Harris). The crooks are involved in a plot to rip off a casino that goes awry when two corrupt cops turn up dead, and the ladies decide to do the job in their place.

    The title of the movie comes from their need to get beyond the city limits as quickly as possible after the robbery. Why they have to do this is never made clear.

    Brian McCardie plays a psychotic — almost too well. Jennifer Esposito's performance is not good, but neither is Todd Field's. Nastassja Kinski is capable of a lot more, but it isn't asked of her in this film.

    There is full-frontal nudity in this film. Unfortunately, it is of Todd Field... There is also considerable violence, drug use, sex, and coarse language.

    This movie is not much good, with some serious plot holes, but it is not so bad that you won't be able to finish watching it. This is director Gigi Gaston's first feature film (she made a documentary before this — a documentary about Sophie B. Hawkins, who gets a small role in this film), and I think her inexperience shows.

    I can't really recommend this.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and is consequently not 16x9 enhanced. I cannot tell what the original intended aspect ratio was, but I suspect it was somewhat wider than this — some of the action seems to happen off-screen when it shouldn't.

    The picture is sharp and clear. Shadow detail is limited (it is particularly poor at 5:58, for example), but it's mostly acceptable. There's no noticeable grain. There is no low-level noise.

    Colour is quite reasonable, with a good representation of a slightly muted cold palette. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are no objectionable film artefacts — I only noticed two small flecks in the entire film. There's some aliasing on the usual suspects, with the most noticeable being car grilles. There's no noticeable moire, and no other MPEG artefacts.

    All-in-all, this is quite a good transfer.

    There are no subtitles — I'd have liked some, because not all of the dialogue is clear.

    The disc is single sided and single layered. That's not a problem, because there's not enough material here to require a second layer.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is just the one soundtrack, in English. It is Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround-encoded, and with mostly mono content.

    The dialogue is mostly clear and fairly easy to understand (even with the mangled pseudo-Russian accents), but there are a few words here and there that are difficult to make out. There are no obvious glitches in audio sync. There is even one cute moment when the speech is in sync with a fish (you'll see it).

    The score is attributed to Billy White Acre, but a lot of the music in the soundtrack takes the form of songs, including a couple written and performed by Sophie B. Hawkins.

    The subwoofer and surround speakers get the night off.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu has three small animated windows, with music.

Trailer (1:40)

    The trailer makes the movie look more interesting than it is.

    As far as I can ascertain this has yet to be released in Region 1. It is reported to be getting a video release (under the title Rip It Off), but that hasn't happened yet. So far all I can find is a report of it being released on VCD in the Philippines...

    Beyond The City Limits is a fairly ordinary film that could have been better.

    The video quality is fairly high, with limited shadow detail being the only real drawback.

    The audio quality is adequate, but nothing special.

    The extra is minimal.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall