Jagged Edge (1985)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Biographies-Cast & Crew
Rating
Year Of Production	1985
Running Time	104:19
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Richard Marquand
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Glenn Close Jeff Bridges Peter Coyote Robert Loggia
Case	Brackley-Trans-No Lip
RPI	$36.95	Music	John Barry

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/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 German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The opening of Jagged Edge actually made me groan: opening titles over a panoramic shot of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, followed by screeching violins in the background accompanying the masked killer climbing up the stairs. I mean, how clichéd can you get? I was prepared for the worst - a B-grade Hitchcock imitation thriller. Fortunately, the film improves but can never quite shake off the taint of trying to imitate a genre but never quite pulling it off successfully.

    When rich heiress Page Forrester (Maria Mayenzet) is brutally murdered in her beach house, her husband Jack (Jeff Bridges) immediately becomes prime suspect as he stands to gain everything from her death. Unscrupulous District Attorney Thomas Krasny (played by Peter Coyote - who bears more than a passing resemblance to William B. Davis who plays the Cigarette Smoking Man in the X-Files TV series) only has circumstantial evidence against Jack, but arrests him anyway.

    Jack hires lawyer Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close) to defend him, even though she has stopped handling criminal cases. She reluctantly agrees, even though she is tormented by the guilt of convicting an innocent man (who later committed suicide in prison) many years ago when she was working for Krasny. Jack turns on the charm, and soon he and Teddy begins having an affair during the murder trial.

    Did Jack really kill his wife, or is he innocent? Is he really in love with Teddy or is he using her? Were he and Page about to break up and did they both commit adultery? The film juggles all these questions and tries to keep the audience guessing till almost the end. Along the way, we also get some plot twists.

    I think writer Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct, Sliver) and director Richard Marquand try very hard, but unfortunately the plot twists are rather predictable and obvious and when they happen they didn't seem that much of a surprise to me. I would have liked one final twist at the very end... Still, it is a watchable film. Incidentally, Richard also directed Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi and you can see a poster for the film at 20:53-21:05.

Video

    The transfer is presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with 16x9 enhancement.

    In general, the transfer is not too bad, especially considering the film source is over 25 years old. It is a little on the soft side, and colours seem a bit on the under-saturated side but is probably consistent with other films of the same age. Shadow detail is acceptable, but not fantastic.

    The film source is slightly on the grainy side but is otherwise reasonably clean. There are a few hairline marks here and there, but nothing to worry about. There is a slight telecine wobble during the opening titles.

    The transfer seemed to be marred by several MPEG compression artefacts, including rings from edge enhancement and also Gibb's effect. The slight grain in the film source also accentuates posterization. There are also numerous examples of slight pixelization.

    There are a large number of subtitle tracks accompanying the film. I turned on the English subtitle track briefly to verify that it was there and functioning.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are five audio tracks accompanying the film, all recorded in Dolby Digital 2.0 at 192 Kb/s. The English and German tracks are surround encoded, the others (French, Italian, Spanish) are in mono. I listened to the English audio track.

    Although there are no faults in the audio track (such as clicks or audio synchronisation issues) there are no highlights either. The soundtrack is very dialogue-focused and Foley effects are pretty minimal. If there is any activity in the rear speakers it must be fairly subtle as I never noticed it. The subwoofer is obviously silent due to the lack of an LFE track.

    As mentioned before, the music (by John Barry) is very derivative of Hitchcock thrillers and otherwise not that memorable.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The extras on this disc are pretty minimal.

Menu

    Static and non-16x9 enhanced.

Biographies-Cast & Crew

    This is a set of stills covering a biographical paragraph and a filmography for:

• Richard Marquand (director)
• Jeff Bridges ("Jack Forrester")
• Glenn Close ("Teddy Barnes")

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• 1.33:1 Pan & Scan version
• Theatrical trailer
• Bonus Trailers
• Production Notes booklet

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• Additional foreign language audio tracks and subtitle tracks

    Jagged Edge is supposed to be a keep-you-guessing-till-the-last-frame kind of thriller, but ended up being rather predictable and formulaic for me. It is presented on a disc with acceptable but mediocre video and audio transfers, and with minimal extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall