Like
Quadrophenia,
the print used is fullscreen. Nothing to see in the way of artifacts, but it's hardly the
best print that's been used, with scratches and flecks often to be seen. It can comfortably
be zoomed to fill a widescreen TV without much loss of important picture information.
The average bitrate is 5.92Mb/s, often peaking over 8Mb/s.
The soundtrack is stereo and doesn't particularly impress much - a shame as they could've
made a surround-sound treat out of the "shooting up the bar" scene. The film is mostly a
downbeat affair so the chance to utilise songs from each era wasn't taken.
Extras :
Chapters :
18 chapters - the usual amount for Universal DVDs, from a company previously known as
Polygram, but a few more wouldn't go amiss. There is no theatrical trailer.
Languages & Subtitles :
English in stereo and subtitles in the same language for the deaf and hard of hearing.
Featurette: "Flesh & Blood: The Story of The Krays" :
A 54-minute featurette about those who knew, or simply knew of, The Krays, which also
features on the double-tape video boxset which has been out for some time. What we also
get here though, are English subtitles for the hard of hearing and five chapters,
splitting up the proceedings. More would have been nice, but it's a better number than the
one long 90-minute chapter for
12 Monkeys'Hamster Factor.
Menu :
Static and silent, the Kemp brothers grimace towards camera as the Krays, mirroring the
DVD cover. Options are available to start the film, select a scene, toggle the subtitles
on/off or watch the featurette.
Overall :
An excellent British film with a top-class script and cast, but content-wise, nothing more
than you'd find on the video. If you have to have this on the shiny format, try and get it
at a discount and not the full £17.99.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
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
