Warrant Officer Paul Brenner, C.I.D.: John Travolta
Warrant Officer Sara Sunhill: Madeleine Stowe
Lieutenant General Joseph Campbell: James Cromwell
Colonel William Kent: Timothy Hutton
Captain Elizabeth Campbell: Leslie Stefanson
Chief Yardley: Daniel von Bargen
Colonel George Fowler: Clarence Williams III
Colonel Robert Moore: James Woods
It's not just Bush and Gore who can have problematic
Presential election campaigns,
but as the competition hots up,
Lieutenant General Joseph Campbell (James Cromwell, who has played
so many good AND bad guys in his autumn years so that you can never take him
at face value) is in line for a vice-presidency.
Slight problem though: his beautiful daughter Elisabeth (Leslie
Stefanson) has been murdered. Like Susannah Farnham in Brookside, it's
not a case of the FACT that she's been offed, but WHO did it and why?
Warrant Officers Paul Brenner (John Travolta) and Sara Sunhill
(Madeleine Stowe) are sent in to investigate what becomes a series of
cover-ups at the West Point base. They suspect everyone
and they suspect no-one amongst a range of chiefs, colonels and captains
including Timothy Hutton, Daniel von Bargen, Clarence Williams III
and her boss, Colonel Robert Moore (James Woods, who proves yet again
that he can act anybody off the screen).
The only downsize - and a lazy one at that - is the plot device about the
two leads being old flames, which gives the male half the excuse to trot out
the usual sexually-devisive queries during the intermediate years. They
dilly-dally around each other for so bloody long that it drags the film
down and you wish they'd just fuck and get it over and done with.
The picture is very good indeed, but it doesn't look quite as pin-sharp as
you'd expect. This may be down to the way it was filmed as every seen looks
to be shot in the late afternoon/early evening summer sun. It's presented in
the original 2.35:1 anamorphic ratio and the average bitrate is a high
7.26Mb/s, often peaking over 9Mb/s.
As you'd expect for a recent Hollywood film, the sound is in Dolby Digital
5.1. There's little to get excited about during interrogation or interview
scenes, but many others have SFX dotted about, even if it's helicopters
flying around the speakers.
Extras :
First off is a just-over-two-minute Theatrical Trailer and a
60-second Teaser Trailer, plus four deleted scenes including an
alternate ending and two romantically-charged scenes between the two
leads.
The 19-minute Featurette contains the usual mix of clips and
interviews, while the extras are completed with a Director's Commentary.
There's not enough chapters to the disc, just 17, but everything you see and
hear here is the same as the Region 1 DVD. A couple of times I thought there
might be a slight cut to the film, but the BBFC lists no such thing and if
it was edited, gone would be the commentary track.
English and German dialogue are in Dolby Digital 5.1, with the other languages
getting surround only. Subtitles are available in English (and hard of hearing),
Arabic, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Icelandic, Norwegian
Polish, Romanian, Swedish and Turkish, plus subs describing the commentary
tracks in English and German.
I was really looking forward to this film after the high-octane action fest
that was
Con Air,
but this is a very pedestrian thriller with not much in the way of thrills
themselves. The 18-cert is mainly in place because of the unnecessarily
over-graphics rape scenes.
Rent it if you must watch another film where someone's killed, everyone's
interviewed, a key suspect tops his/herself, as it should be seen in 2.35:1,
not cropped to 4:3 on Channel 5 when it comes on TV, but don't buy it.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
