Absence of the Good (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Theatrical Trailer-1.78:1, not 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	94:27
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	John Flynn
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Stephen Baldwin Rob Knepper Shawn Hoff Allen Garfield Silas Weir Mitchell Tyne Daly
Case	Brackley-Trans-No Lip
RPI	$36.95	Music	Richard Marvin

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.0 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Can I make my view about this film any clearer? The story is poor, the acting is abysmal, the credibility of the characters is non-existent and the cinematography is barely adequate. But don't just take my word for it, listen to my family. After about two minutes of watching this effort, my sister proudly proclaimed that there was no acting on display here and walked off (and she is a real film buff). Having paused the film to go and enjoy my evening meal, it took my mother about fifteen minutes to twig to the fact that the film was paused - there was that little difference in the entertainment value on display.

    What passes for the story is anything but a riveting serial killer thriller. Caleb Barnes (Stephen Baldwin) is a cop with the Salt Lake Police Department, coming to terms with wife Mary (Shawn Huff) who is not handling the accidental killing of their son at school too well. But despite the personal tragedy, he returns to work to help track down a serial killer whose modus operandi is to bash the skulls of his victims in, then proceed to tidy up the scene of the crime. What follows is a fairly boring eighty minutes to the eventual conclusion. How predictable is the story? Well the police shrink (Tyne Daly) on the basis of extremely flimsy evidence deduces the entire life story of the killer in about ten seconds flat. Yeah, right, really credible stuff indeed.

    Well the story is pretty boring, and it is brought to realization by some very ordinary attempts at acting. Okay so we tend to expect that from Stephen Baldwin, so he really cannot disappoint your very low expectations. But this is riddled with some of the cruddiest acting that it has been my misfortune to watch - and that includes anything done by Jean-Claude Van Damme and Keanu Reeves (well okay that is stretching it a little). All I can say is why was Elmo not nominated for an Oscar? He can act better than anyone on offer here. There is no real direction in the directing and at no stage does this come even remotely close to a gripping thriller. In fact, it is so bad that they should have aimed this as a comedy - it would perhaps have come closer to success. Overall this has all the hallmarks of a student film - and a not very good one at that.

    If you choose to indulge in this effort, don't say that I did not warn you!

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, which is the exact ratio for this made for television effort. It is 16x9 enhanced.

    Apart from some annoying minor lapses, this is a sharp and well detailed transfer that is actually far too good for a television film. The odd lapses are when the transfer becomes a little soft in definition, but nothing really too bad. The transfer is reasonably clear throughout. Shadow detail is reasonably good throughout, although a couple of times I felt it should have been better. There did not appear to be any problems with low level noise in the transfer.

    This is in general a muted colour palette, but is nonetheless quite a vibrant transfer. On occasions the palette becomes very bright and really vibrant which provides a nice contrast to the generally muted colours.

   There were no apparent MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There were no apparent film-to-video artefacts in the transfer. There were a few film artefacts present but nothing too intrusive and they are barely noticed in the flow of the film.

   This is a very rare beast indeed for Columbia TriStar - there are no subtitle options on the disc.

Audio

   There is only the one audio track on the DVD, being a Dolby Digital 5.0 effort in English. The audio track is flagged to my player as a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, but there is definitely no bass channel in use here: if it exists, it is very silent indeed.

   The dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout.

   There did not appear to be any audio sync problems with the transfer.

   The musical score comes from Richard Marvin, and in keeping with the whole tenet of the film, is completely unmemorable.

   There is not too much blatantly wrong with the soundtrack, apart from the absence of the bass channels, but it really does not reach any great heights at all. Surround channel presence was not especially great, with the rear channels being especially lacking in presence. Still, the film itself does not present too many opportunities for serious surround presence, so it really is not the soundtrack's fault that it is not better than it is.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

    A very good video transfer.

    A pretty good audio transfer.

    Very basic extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall