Dom Robinson reviews

Distributed by
Pioneer LDCE

Cat.no: PDFM 60292

Cert: 12

Running time: 122 minutes

Year: 1995

Pressing: 1998

Region(s): 2, PAL

Chapters: 25 plus extras

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 (Eng, Fre, Ger)
& Dolby Surround (Spa, Ita)

Languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian

Subtitles: English, French, Netherlands, Swedish

Widescreen: 2.35:1

16:9-Enhanced: Yes

Macrovision: Yes

Price: £N/A

Extras : Scene index.

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Director:

Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight)

Producers:

Laurence Mark, Joel B. Michaels, James Gorman, Renny Harlin

Screenplay:

Robert King, Marc Norman

Music:

John Debney

Cast:

Morgan : Geena Davis (The Long Kiss Goodnight, Thelma and Louise, Beetlejuice, The Fly)
Shaw : Matthew Modine (Full Metal Jacket, Short Cuts)
Dawg : Frank Langella (Eddie, Dave, Brainscan)
John Reed : Maury Chaykin (Devil In A Blue Dress, The Adjuster)
Ainslee : Patrick Malahide (The Long Kiss Goodnight, Minder (TV))
Glasspoole : Stan Shaw (Roots, Runaway)

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The year is 1668, and Geena Davis stars as Morgan Adams, a pirate, who after a recent altercation with Dawg (Frank Langella, currently starring in the cinema hit Eddie) and his men, sees her father die in the struggle to escape. His dying wish is that she takes over the captaincy of his ship, The Morning Star, and to cut his hair to the scalp. When next on board, she brings the captain-election bickering to an end by announcing herself as the new captain, holding up the piece of her father's scalp which shows a treasure map of Cutthroat Island...

..or rather there are three pieces. The second is held by her uncle, so no problems there, but the third is in the hands of Dawg. Another problem, is that the map is written in Latin, so the search is on for someone who can translate. Morgan's ship lands in Port Royal, Jamaica, where she buys Shaw (Matthew Modine), a slave who she buys to do the job, and together as they break out of the town with a couple of crew members, the action begins with a carriage chase, with the locals in pursuit including the owner of the carriage, Ainslee (Patrick Malahide, most well known as Inspector Chisholm from the TV series Minder), as well as John Reed, who he has just bribed to turn traitor on Morgan (ie. if he doesn't lead him to her, Reed will be shuffling off his mortal coil more sooner than he thought).

Geena Davis does an adequate job as Morgan, not that it's much of a taxing part and a far cry from something like Thelma and Louise or Angie, both of which gave her much more to get her teeth into, while Matthew Modine joins in with the wisecracks, but does little else apart from stand and smile. It's interesting to note that his part was originally written for Michael Douglas, but he literally jumped ship from the project.

Frank Langella grimaces and gnarls his way through his lines of script in a straight-forward fashion, but you certainly can't beat the appearance of Patrick Malahide, also seen in The Long Kiss Goodnight, albeit using a horrendous Texan American accent of some description then. Using his own voice this time, I kept expecting him to mention Arfur Daley... :)

The picture is perfect nearly all the time. A badly-encoded DVD would have problems with such a dark film as this on all the areas of brown, black and grey, resulting in blocking and artifacts. However, this disc has clearly been given good treatment in the encoding because the only parts I saw brief artifacts appear were on areas of smoke after a cannon or gun had been fired and this is only visible when the weapon is executed in close-up. All the daylight scenes look naturally brilliant.

I could not determine an average bitrate figure, but rest assured the quality of the picture is not in doubt. The film is presented in its original widescreen ratio of 2.35:1, the widescreen framing being essential for Renny Harlin's extreme compositions and stunning sets and locations and it is enhanced for 16:9 widescreen televisions thus allowing for higher resolution.

The surround sound also lashes out, especially in chapters such as Straight Through The Storm, Open Fire, and the aforementioned Carriage Chase. English, French and German purchasers of this title will be pleased to hear that their language is available in Dolby Digital 5.1, while Spanish and Italian punters get Dolby Surround.

Extras :

Chapters :

Languages/Subtitles :

As stated earlier, English, French and German languages are presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, while Spanish and Italian are only available in Dolby Surround.

Subtitles only come in four formats: English, French, Netherlands and Swedish.

Menu :

The main menu doesn't come up first though. You have to sit through a brief copyright warning, the usual Pioneer introduction, plus the Dolby Digital "Canyon" intro which is worth watching if you haven't seen it before, but afterwards you just want to skip past it.

When the menu appears it is available in seven languages, which begs the question: why so few subtitles options as these menu languages collect all the language and subtitle selections together.

One good thing to mention about this European Region 2 release is that it's uncut.

Since I reviewed the PAL Laserdisc I've found that this film was only cut by approximately four seconds to get a PG-rating for UK audiences. I understand that the pieces cut are headbutts and other bits of violence, mostly performed by Geena Davis, although some of this is still quite clearly visible, and even in its form on this disc, it has its violent moments including a nasty neckbreak from Davis in chapter 18 (Morgan To The Rescue). Why the cuts? Well, the BBFC usually tend to have a hard time passing scenes of violence towards women, so it doesn't follow that violence by women would be any different. However, it might not necessarily be the BBFC's fault entirely if the film company, Carolco, requested a PG-certificate.

In the past, other works of director Renny Harlin's have suffered at the hands of either the BBFC or the respective film company. Cliffhanger (1993) was cut for a 15-certificate, and for Die Hard 2 (1990) the cinema version and pan-and-scan video release were also cut to a 15-certificate. The widescreen video and PAL Laserdisc are both available as an uncut 18-certificate, although the BBFC will now no longer allow two versions of a film to be released with differing certificates.

How good is this film though? Not as good as one could have hoped for in the eyes of this reviewer, but for anyone who is a fan of the film they'll be glad of the quality on display, even if no-one will be too happy about the complete lack of extras.

Its competition in the DVD market is the Region 1 release - similarly uncut - and with 30 chapters instead of 25, plus both widescreen and pan-and-scan versions of the film (one version per side), but while each version only gets the single-layer treatment, the European Region 2 release enjoys a dual-layer production, thus allowing for more Dolby Digital languages.

FILM	 		: **
PICTURE QUALITY		: ****½
SOUND QUALITY		: *****
EXTRAS			: *
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OVERALL			: ***½

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1998.