Blue Murder (1995)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio & Animation
Rating
Year Of Production	1995
Running Time	197:20
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Michael Jenkins
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Richard Roxburgh Tony Martin Steve Bastoni Gary Day Steve Jacobs Peter Phelps Marcus Graham Alex Dimitriades Bill Hunter John Hargreaves Gary Sweet
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$39.95	Music	None Given

    Blue Murder  is a docudrama based on the real life story surrounding Roger Rogerson (Richard Roxburgh), one of his associates Neddy Smith (Tony Martin), and an honest cop, Michael Drury (Steve Baston). This two part series was produced in 1995, but could not be seen in NSW because Neddy Smith was still awaiting trial. This is a brutal and disturbing story - the characters portrayed are sadistic and cold-blooded murderers.

    The screenplay and acting are very good and draw you into a world that you really don't want to be a part of. We follow the activities of the corrupt police as they exchange money and favours for protection from prosecutions. They basically have unlimited power, and the result is as you would expect, corruption. Smith flourishes under this protection, basically operating outside the law without any fear of reprisals. The story builds towards a climax where they cross paths with an honest police officer, Drury. Drury gets in their way, and so they decide to kill him. This was the trigger that led to their downfall and the attempted clean-up of the NSW police force. If this was a movie, there would be moments when you would think that they had gone too far in their portrayal of the brutality. When you remember that most of this is based on reality, it leaves you with a feeling of cold dread.

Video

    This is a bad transfer. There is a large amount of grain and noise present which has led to many problems, particularly with the MPEG encoding.

    We are presented with a 1.33 transfer that is not 16x9 enhanced. This is the original ratio as this was produced for television.  

    Sharpness is not great and is affected by the grain and pixelization. Shadow detail is acceptable but blacks do contain low level noise.

    The undersaturated colours reminded me of the many police dramas that were on TV at the same time these events were happening. Remember back to Cop Shop and you will have a good idea of the colours and saturation.

    MPEG artefacts abound. Just about every scene has macro-blocking. The level of grain is very distracting and has completely confused the MPEG encoder. Just about any scene transition shows a loss of what little detail there was. Examples abound, with particularly bad examples at 8:22 in the first episode on the roadway. Two police cars are attempting to block the road - single step as they approach each other and many artefacts can be seen. Posterization is visible on many surfaces, especially faces such as at 59:50 in the second episode. There is also some ringing, probably from edge enhancement. An example of this can be found along the edge of the face at 31:30 in the first episode.

    There are no subtitles, which might have been useful as the dialogue clarity was less than perfect.

    This is a dual-layered disc. The layer change is probably between the two episodes, but I could not confirm this.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The Audio is a Dolby Digital 2.0 effort. The Pro-logic flag has not been set, but I thought the audio improved somewhat by the addition of Pro-logic decoding. The sound stage widened a bit and there was some surround activity, but not a lot.

    The English Dolby Digital 2.0 track is the only audio track and is obviously the one I listened to.

    Dialogue quality could have been better. Some of the actors mumble quite badly, making it hard to make out what they are saying at times. To be fair, the worst instance of this was just after one of them was hit in the head by a phone book - this would make anyone hard to understand!

    There were no obvious problems with the audio sync.

    The music again reminded me of the TV series of the period. There was nothing spectacular about the music but neither did it detract from the viewing experience.

    There was some use of the surround channels, about the same as any other Australian TV show.

    The subwoofer received a little redirected bass, but nothing that you would really notice.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    A simple static page is the backdrop to the menu with a short music clip playing.

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    There does not appear to be a Region 1 version of this disc.

    Blue Murder is not an enjoyable watch, but it is compelling viewing. Special mention must be given to Gary Sweet for his portrayal of the crazed pathological killer Dale Flannery - it is downright scary.

    The video quality is poor, with far too much grain.

    The audio is acceptable for an Australian TV production.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall