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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - Dolby Digital City
Year Released	1997	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	120 minutes	Other Extras	Filmographies
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (60:38)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	4	Director	Oliver Stone
Studio Distributor	Columbia Tristar	Starring	Sean Penn Jennifer Lopez Nick Nolte Powers Boothe Claire Danes Joaquin Phoenix Billy Bob Thornton Jon Voight
RRP	$34.95	Music	Ennio Morricone

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement	Yes	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 ) English (Dolby Digital 5.1) French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
Macrovision	Yes
Subtitles	English French Dutch Arabic

    Through a series of unfortunate incidents, Bobby loses the money he had with him to repay his gambling debt, but a way is presented for him to earn this money back. He can either kill Grace McKenna, or kill her husband Jake (Nick Nolte).

    I felt this movie dragged somewhat, and lacked strong direction. More emphasis appeared to be placed on the cinematic style used to tell this story rather than concentrating on the story itself. Unusual camera techniques can only do so much for a weak story. The movie was filled with characters that were too one-dimensional for my liking.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer was variable in its sharpness, from the typical razor sharp Columbia Tristar image to very grainy indeed. This was particularly the case for a lot of the outdoor shots and wide shots. I believe that this is how the original film was, and appears to have been a deliberate cinematic choice by the director, Oliver Stone. This texture gave this film somewhat of a dated appearance, looking almost like a home movie at times. Indeed, I wonder whether or not a lot of this movie may have been shot in either 16mm or 8mm format and then blown up to 35mm to give this effect.

    Most of this movie is shot in the day, in bright light, but what shadow there was was nicely detailed. No low level noise was apparent, even during the deliberately grainy scenes.

    The colours had a very unusual appearance to them. Once again, I believe that this is a deliberate cinematographic choice, since they varied between the grainy shots and the clearer shots. Reds in particular, tended to be on the heavy side. The overall effect of the colour palette used was to give the impression of watching an old home movie.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen, even in the grainy scenes. I noted that the bit rate meter read much higher in these scenes than in the cleaner scenes. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some aliasing here and there, particularly in scenes with venetian blinds. This was minor, but more noticeable than in other recent Columbia Tristar transfers. Film artefacts varied between non-existent during the cleaner scenes to quite noticeable during some of the grainier scenes. I noted that there were a number of credits for archival footage at the end of the movie, and I wondered whether these materials were the ones that exhibited the film artefacts.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change occurring at 60:38, between Chapters 13 and 14. It is relatively non-intrusive, causing only a minor disruption to the flow of the movie.

Audio

    I felt that the level of the English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack was set quite low, and listened to it at 5dB louder than my usual listening setting.

    Dialogue was mostly clear, though there were a significant number of times that it was hard to make out.

    There were no audio sync problems.

    The score by Ennio Morricone was sparingly used, and was fairly unremarkable. The songs used in this movie tended to be 50s and 60s numbers, all designed to add to the "time-warp" feel of this movie.

     The surround channels were lightly used. Generally, not much was happening in the surrounds, even in the scenes set outside.

    The .1 channel was used sparingly.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Filmographies

    The video quality is variable, but this is because of the source material.

    The audio quality is just average, with some dialogue hard to understand.

    The extras present are very limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
11th February 1999