The Rock

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1996	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	130:45 minutes	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	Flipper (62:08)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	2,4	Director	Michael Bay
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Sean Connery Nicolas Cage Ed Harris Michael Biehn William Forsythe
Case	Amaray
RRP	$34.95	Music	Nick Glennie-Smith Hans Zimmer

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement	Yes	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 5.1) French (Dolby Digital 2.0 ) Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 )
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?
Subtitles	English Dutch French English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No

    Ed Harris (General Hummel) is a disgruntled and highly decorated army officer who demands recognition for the numerous U.S. covert soldiers killed in combat over the years and ignored by the U.S. government. When negotiations fail to advance his cause, General Hummel resorts to considerably more desperate measures. He steals a large quantity of an extremely toxic nerve gas and commandeers Alcatraz as a stronghold. He demands $100 million dollars, mainly for compensation for these victims of war, but also to pay his motley band of mercenaries. He threatens to launch the nerve gas into San Francisco if his demands are not met.

    Many spectacular stunts and action sequences ensue.

    This is the third time I have viewed The Rock, and the story gets weaker every time. The first time through, it was a spectacular, exciting thrill ride. Now, the glaring plot holes are all too evident.

Video

    The transfer was razor sharp and crystal clear at almost all times. Some scenes were a little blurry, but this is more likely the cinematography rather than the transfer. Shadow detail was reasonably good, though I felt it was a little lacking at times. There was no low level noise.

    The colours were well saturated throughout, with no evidence whatsoever of any under or oversaturation.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some trivial aliasing at times, and some moiré effects on some of the TV monitor displays. Film artefacts were excessively present, with far too many distracting white flecks for a transfer of this recent vintage. This was one of the disappointing aspects of this transfer.

    This disc is a flipper. The side change occurs at 62:08, and is highly intrusive. It is placed at the point where the incursion team has just entered Alcatraz, and it is a major disruption to the flow of the movie.

    I had the opportunity of comparing the video transfer of this disc with the Region 1 version. The Region 4 version has clearly more resolution, with no visible scan lines, versus the non-16x9 enhanced Region 1 version. Judder is also evident in the Region 1 version, which is completely absent in the Region 4 version. Nonetheless, the Region 1 version of this disc remains an excellent transfer, even though the Region 4 version of this disc has a clearly better video transfer. Of course, this comment is tempered by the fact that the Region 1 version of this disc is not a flipper.

Audio

    You cannot change audio selections on the fly, and must do this via the main menu.

    Dialogue was occasionally hard to make out, but this was not particularly distracting.

    There were no audio sync problems with this disc.

    The musical score by Nick Glennie-Smith and Hans Zimmer was somewhat clichéd, but achieved the aim of keeping the tension going throughout the movie.

    The surround channels were aggressively used for explosions and for music, and were kept active throughout the majority of this movie. A nicely enveloping soundfield was created, though I felt that some of the gunshots and explosions seemed a little limited in their intensity.

    The .1 channel was kept busy supporting all the explosions and supporting the music. It was very well integrated into the overall mix, never calling attention to itself, but anchoring the bottom end of this soundtrack nicely.

    I compared the Region 4 soundtrack with the Region 1 soundtrack. The Region 4 soundtrack sounded at the same pitch as the Region 1 soundtrack, so it has been post processed to accomplish this. It was hard to put a finger on it, but the Region 1 soundtrack sounded better than the Region 4 soundtrack. There was more punch in the gunshots and the explosions, and more overall clarity.

What's Missing / What's Extra

•     Theatrical Trailer

•     16x9 enhancement

Menu

    The R4 version has had a number of scenes censored in comparison to the uncut R1 version. See here for details of the cuts.

    The video quality is generally excellent, and marred only by an excessive amount of film artefacts present in the transfer.

    The audio quality is also almost of reference quality, though the Region 1 version's soundtrack sounds better.

    The extras are non-existent.

    So which version is better? That's a really hard call with this disc. The video transfer is clearly superior with the Region 4 disc, but it is a flipper, and the audio sounds better on the Region 1 disc. I would tend to favour the Region 1 disc in this instance. I suspect that I would reverse this call if the Region 4 version was RSDL instead of being a flipper, which in this case is a huge negative feature of the disc.

Video
Audio
Extras	nil
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
29th June 1999