Dead Pool (1988)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Main Menu Audio Listing-Cast & Crew-1 page Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1988
Running Time	87:28
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Buddy Van Horn
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Clint Eastwood Evan Kim Patricia Clarkson Liam Neeson James Carrey David Hunt
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$34.95	Music	Lalo Schifrin

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese German English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The movie does have some redeeming features: we get to see early roles for Jim Carrey (he is billed as James Carrey) - he plays a drug-using rock star (voiced by Guns'n'Roses) - and Liam Neeson - he's Peter Swan, the director of a music video / movie.

    This time Harry's new partner is a Chinese/American (maybe one of the reasons this is the last Dirty Harry is because they ran out of minorities?) Al Quan (Evan Kim).

    There are two central threads to this movie: the dead pool, and Dirty Harry's relationship with the media. The dead pool is a macabre game, in which each participant selects a list of celebrities who may die before the year's end - the winner has the greatest number of dead celebrities. Harry's interaction with the media has rarely been calm. In this case, the media, as personified by Patricia Clarkson, playing Samantha Walker (that name's been used more than once...), manipulates the circumstances to get Harry out to dinner.

    There are additional complications - Harry has just put a mob boss (Lou Janero) in prison. Janero is not happy, and he sends killers after Harry, until Harry comes up with a novel solution to this problem. Harry's solution is amusing.

    There's less plot to this movie than previous Dirty Harry movies - it's less satisfying.

    In passing, I would like to mention that I've finally had a chance to see the artwork for the recent releases of Clint Eastwood movies: they've done a nice job of tying all the movies together, while preserving the original art. If you collect these movies, they'll look good sitting together on the shelf. And it's not just the Dirty Harry movies, either - a number of others have been released in matching covers.

Video

    This movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced. That's the original aspect ratio.

    The image is fairly sharp, with adequate shadow detail. There is no low level visible noise. The night-time scenes are somewhat grainier, but that's inherent in the source material.

    Colour is strong and fully saturated. There's no colour bleed.

    There are no visible film artefacts, but there are frequent traces of aliasing, and a moment or two of moire. There are no MPEG artefacts - that's good.

    The subtitles are attractive, in white with a black border. They are accurate enough, and well-timed.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered, so there's no layer change. Amusingly, the cover reads "SINGLE-LAYER FORMAT. Layer transition may trigger a slight pause" - that's perfectly true, but a bit misleading.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    We get the same choice of soundtracks as on all the other Dirty Harry movies: English, French, and Italian. The English soundtrack is Dolby Digital 5.1 at 384 kbps - that's what I listened to. The other two soundtracks are Dolby Digital stereo, surround encoded.

    The dialogue is clear and understandable. There are no visible audio sync problems.

    The score is more Lalo Schifrin. Standard for a Dirty Harry movie.

    The surrounds are used nicely for ambience. They get some of the score, too, but it is the ambient sounds that show real artistry. The subwoofer never draws attention to itself, but it works in well.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    This disc has the fewest extras of any of the Dirty Harry movies.

Menu

    The main menu is static, with music. It is much like all the other Dirty Harry menus.

Cast and Crew

    A simple list of the main players, nothing more.

Trailer (1:26)

    A trailer presented in about 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The Region 4 version is missing:

• Behind the Scenes (2 pages of text)
• On Location (2 pages of text)
• Memorable Lines (1 page of text)
• snapper case

    The Region 1 version is missing:

• transparent Amaray case

    That makes me lean towards the Region 4 version already (I detest snapper cases). Add in the fact that both versions have pretty much equivalent transfers, except that the R1 is NTSC and the R4 is PAL, and I favour the Region 4.

    This is a good presentation on DVD of a reasonable movie.

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is fine.

    The extras are basic.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall