Black Dog (Magna Pacific) (1998)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Main Menu Audio Biographies-Cast & Crew Interviews-Cast & Crew Production Notes Theatrical Trailer Featurette-B Roll Music Video-Rhett Atkins Featurette-Rhett Atkins B Roll
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	84:58
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Kevin Hooks
Studio Distributor	Magna Home Entertainment	Starring	Patrick Swayze Randy Travis Meatloaf Stephen Tobolowsky Charles Dutton
Case	Click
RPI	$29.95	Music	George S. Clinton

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.30:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    While Black Dog is not the worst film I have ever seen, it is certainly not the best by some margin. There is one word that can describe my feeling about this movie, and that is depth, or rather lack thereof. The storyline lacks depth, the acting is also somewhat shallow, and the stunts miss the mark by some margin. The storyline is a collection of Hollywood standards. We have a good man, down on his luck, who agrees to take on a risky and illegal venture for the sake of his family. There are two police officers from different departments that are antagonistic towards one another, and we have the bad guys that then kidnap the man's family and so on. Unfortunately, none of these parts are written or played well. There are also some technical faults - for example, when you disconnect the air lines on a prime mover, the trailer brakes activate immediately, as they are held off by the air pressure, not on.

    Jack Crews (Patrick Swayze) is a truck driver down on his luck, who two years previously made one too many runs. Fatigue then caused him to have a fatal accident for which he was sentenced to two years in prison and loss of his truck license forever. As the film opens, he has returned to his family and is working as a mechanic, but his family has hit hard times and is about to lose their house. The owner of the truck company that he works for is also a criminal who is bringing large numbers of illegal firearms into the state. He talks Crews into driving a load of firearms with a combination of blackmail and money.

    The majority of the film covers his eventful journey back with the weapons. The supplier at the other end decides to double cross everybody and is out to get the weapons back, the police and FBI are also interested in the weapons shipment and Crews' family is kidnapped when he appears to be having second thoughts about the whole business. To say more would be to ruin what little storyline there is. We simply travel along with Crews while a series of motor vehicles attempt to run him off the road, resulting in some admittedly close-to-spectacular truck crashes.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    There was a general lack of sharpness throughout. The foreground was probably acceptable but the backgrounds lacked detail. Shadow detail was average with some detail visible but some scenes were a little opaque. There was little low level noise.

    The colours were generally all right but nothing spectacular. Some of the metallic paint jobs on the vehicles had good saturation but other colours were a little muted. There was no chroma noise but there was a small amount of colour bleed in some scenes.

    There was evidence of slight over compression throughout the film. Backgrounds had some subtle blocking and posterization. A particularly bad example is the background at 14:33 where blocking and clear loss of detail is visible. Also, where the truck comes over the rise at 23:44 there are artefacts, particularly on the front bumper.

    The worst feature of the transfer was severe aliasing, some of the worst I have seen. You can pick just about any scene and it is in evidence with very clear examples at 13:40 on the moving car and at 17:17 and in particular at 34:34.

    There are not many film artefacts and what was there was not distracting.

    There are no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio on this disc is also disappointing.

    There is a single English Dolby Digital 5.1 track on this disc.

    Dialogue quality was a little variable. At times, the dialogue was a little hard to understand but for the majority of the film it was acceptable. The audio was in sync with the on-screen action.

    We are treated to a series of American trucking songs as the musical landscape for this film. The theme song was performed by Rhett Akins, and a music clip of this song is included in the extras. The music was appropriate for the film if a little bland.

     The surrounds were hardly active at all. There were attempts in a couple of places to bring the soundstage forward, such as the black dog scene, which were reasonably successful but they were the exception rather than the rule. There were a couple of occasions, four I think, where discrete effects were used but they were not integrated into the soundtrack. The entire soundstage collapsed into the surround speaker that was in use.

     The majority of activity from the subwoofer was redirected bass from the other channels. The LFE track hardly raised a blip other than in a couple of explosions. While there were a couple of effects that did contain some bass it was not nearly as active as it could have been for this kind of movie.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menus have a static background and are surprisingly accompanied by a Dolby Digital 5.1 sound clip, actually the theme song of the movie. They are 16x9 enhanced.

Theatrical Trailer

    This is presented in 1.33:1 and is accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 sound track.

Production Notes

    A series of text pages giving a short blurb on the production of the film.

Cast and Crew

    The usual biography of the main characters with the last entry for Rhett Akins actually leading to a series of short video interviews.

B Roll

    Not quite sure why this is here. This is a series of clips shot from behind the camera during filming. They do give a very short insight into the filming and in particular how one of the truck scenes was filmed. Other than that, they seem a little lacking in purpose.

Music Video

    The music video for the film's theme song. Presented in 1.33:1 with a Dolby Digital 2.0 sound track.

Rhett Akins B Roll

    Same as above but even more pointless.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• English subtitles for the hearing impaired.
• Spanish subtitles
• 1.85:1 transfer for the theatrical trailer
• French Dolby Digital 2.0 sound track
• Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 sound track

The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• Dolby Digital 5.1 audio on the menus
• Interview snippets with Rhett Akins
• B Roll
• Rhett Akins B Roll

    I actually had the Region 1 disc on hand during this review. The transfer on the Region 1 disc was better than the Region 4 transfer. It was still not a great transfer but it was sharper, the colours were richer and there were less MPEG artefacts. The aliasing was still present but was not as severe. After watching both, even with the missing extras (which I think are of little value), I would have to call the Region 1 DVD the winner.

    An all-round disappointment for me from both a movie and disc perspective. I am not sure that casting Meatloaf as one of the two main protagonists was a good idea either.

    The video has a real problem with aliasing.

    The audio was flat.

    The extras were somewhat strange.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall