Two Hands

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio Cast & Crew Interviews Cast & Crew Biographies Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Released	1998
Running Time	89:16
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	4	Director	Gregor Jordan
Studio Distributor	REP Distribution Universal Pictures Video	Starring	Heath Ledger Bryan Brown David Field Susie Porter Rose Byrne Mariel McClory Steve Le Marquand Tom Long Steve Vidler
Case	Transparent Amaray
RPI	$36.95	Music	Cezary Skubiszewski

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 320Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	?1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Annoying Product Placement	Yes, mildly
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Jimmy (Heath Ledger) is a child of King's Cross. His background is not really spelled out for us, but we know he has a brother who was brutally murdered because of an unpaid debt and he works as a bouncer for a sleazy strip joint. We also know that he is handy in a fist-fight. Pando (Bryan Brown) is the hoodlum king of King's Cross, involved in numerous shady dealings, and most definitely extremely villainous and dangerous. Everybody wants to work for Pando, as he is their ticket out of the sleaze into the high life.

    Jimmy is given a job to do; deliver $10,000 across town, no questions asked. Unfortunately, circumstances intervene, with a series of unfortunate (and often wryly funny) incidents resulting in him losing the $10,000. Clearly, Pando will not be pleased with this turn of events, so Jimmy desperately seeks a way to acquire $10,000. The most logical way for him to do this is to rob a bank, which he duly does. I never thought a bank robbery could be both dramatic and funny at the same time, but this one is.

    Complicating matters somewhat is Alex (Rose Byrne), who has recently moved to Sydney from the country, and who forms an instant attraction to Jimmy (and vice versa).

    Two Hands has it all; action, drama, humour, unfortunate co-incidences, the para-normal, and some stunningly violent moments that catch you completely unawares. This is a great Australian movie. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it, although be aware that it is MA-rated and earns this rating with copious swearing and glimpses of some really nasty violence at times, so it definitely isn't one for the kiddies.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of exactly 1.85:1. It is 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is uniformly sharp and clear throughout, although some of the rapid motion camerawork taxed the quality of the image to its limits. Shadow detail is generally good. The early part of the movie is a tad dark, but this seems to be inherent in the source material. I would strongly recommend watching this DVD in an environment with strongly controlled lighting conditions for best results because large portions of it are set in darker locales. There is no low level noise.

    Colours are accurately rendered, and even vibrant at times, although the great majority of the movie shows the gritty colouration of this seedy part of town. Gaudy splashes of colour, such as in neon signs, were immaculately rendered with no colour bleeding or smearing, and were a highlight of this transfer.

    No significant MPEG artefacts were seen. If you paused the image on some of the more rapidly moving scenes, you could see a hint of background pixelization, but this was invisible at normal playback speed. Aliasing was remarkably absent from this transfer, despite frequent images of objects that are aliasing-prone on show, particular cars with copious amounts of chrome. Film artefacts were also remarkably absent from this transfer, and I can say that I did not notice a single one.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Dialogue was beautifully captured by this soundtrack and was clearly audible at all times, other than the odd highly-accented phrase from Jimmy's elderly neighbour which I had a little trouble understanding.

    Audio sync was marginal for the first 10 minutes or so of the movie, but after that settled down to be excellent for the rest of the movie.

    The music was composed by Cezary Skubiszewski, and perfectly suited the movie in conjunction with the numerous contemporary pieces of music.

    The surround channel was used remarkably well by this soundtrack, with frequent ambient sounds being placed in the rear, creating an excellent surrounding soundfield. Action sequences were aggressively mixed into the rears, and even dialogue-only scenes tended to have enough surround activity to not collapse into mono. All-in-all, this is one of the better matrix soundtracks that I have had the pleasure of listening to.

    The .1 channel was not specifically encoded, but plenty of redirected bass appropriately made it to the subwoofer.
 

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu Audio

Cast & Crew Interviews

Cast & Crew Biographies

Theatrical Trailer

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna (read my bio)
3rd November 2000