Striking Distance

BUY IT	RENT IT

General		Extras
Category	Action	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - Dolby Digital City
Year Released	1993	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	98 minutes	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	4	Director	Rowdy Herrington
Studio Distributor	Columbia Tristar	Starring	Bruce Willis Sarah Jessica Parker Dennis Farina Tom Sizemore Robert Pastorelli
RRP	$34.95	Music	Brad Fiedel

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Dolby Digital	2.0
16x9 Enhancement	Yes	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 ) French (Dolby Digital 2.0 )
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
Macrovision	Yes
Subtitles	English French Dutch Arabic

    The basic premise revolves around a serial killer, whose identity remains unknown, but whom disgraced cop Tom Hardy (Bruce Willis) is convinced is a fellow Pittsburgh police officer. That's about the plot in a nutshell. Throw in a few good supporting performances from Sarah Jessica Parker as one of Tom's partners and Dennis Farina as the Chief Of Police and you have your movie. Fortunately, the movie moves along at a cracking pace, never allowing you to get bored with what is basically a pretty flimsy plot.

    Don't expect this movie to change your life, but if you are looking for a good, spectacular action movie to show off your home theatre system, then this comes recommended.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced. I noted one scene where a lower line of captioning was slightly cut off by the picture framing, which implies that marginally incorrect framing was used for this transfer, but there were no other framing problems noted.

    The transfer was razor sharp and crystal clear, and really excellent looking for a 1993 movie. Shadow detail was spot on at all times. No low level noise was apparent.

    The colours were perfectly rendered, except for one scene towards the very end of the movie which looked marginally washed out.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some trivial aliasing very occasionally, but once again, Columbia Tristar have shown that they have this artefact well under control. Film artefacts were pretty much non-existent. Early on in the film, there were three very brief skips in the video stream, almost as if frames had been cut, but this did not occur beyond the 10 minute mark in the movie.

Audio

    Dialogue was always very clear and easy to understand.

    There was a slight audio sync problem with Bruce Willis' dialogue in a scene between 40:29 and 41:00. Dennis Farina's dialogue during this scene was much more on the ball, so this is either an ADR problem, or Bruce's dialogue was changed at some stage for this scene.

    The music by Brad Fiedel was frequently present, and very reminiscent of the late 80s and early 90s. It suitably accompanied the on-screen action.

     The surround channel was reasonably aggressively used for music and for special effects, which were almost omnipresent throughout the entire movie. It is a very enveloping soundtrack, even though it is only a matrix mix.

    The .1 channel, whilst of course not specifically encoded, nonetheless received lots of signal from this soundtrack with the multitude of gunshots, explosions and crashes portrayed on the screen. It was kept working for a good proportion of the movie.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

    The video quality is virtually reference quality.

    The audio quality is superb for a matrix mix.

    The extras present are very limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
7th February 1999