De Palma, looking for a winning formula after box office
nosedives Wiseguys (unremarkable) and Body Double (underrated,
if quirky), finds it here. Less brutal than his Al Pacino gangster
outings (Scarface, Carlito's Way), this is held together by a
solid David Mamet screenplay and bolstered by a top notch Ennio Morricone
score, the latter a joy from opening martial drumbeats (echoing on rear
channels) onwards. Sound is impressive throughout, but the explosion at the
end of Chapter 2, followed by a car driving from left to right, spring to
mind as high points.
Lavish hotel lobbies and impressive architecture jostle with functional
police offices and seedy, wet city streets, lensed with cinematographer
Stephen H. Burum's gorgeous eye for widescreen. Amazing set pieces include
Costner's men with a screen-wide line of cavalry cops ambushing a drugs deal
on a rural bridge, a couple of bloody murders of Costner's team (not that
either I or the shrewdly named chapter titles are going to reveal their
identities in advance) and the famous re-staging of Potemkin's Odessa Steps
sequence in a gangster shootout in the city's railroad station (can Costner
save the baby racing down the steps in its freewheeling pram?).
Again, this is a great movie - the real question is how does it rate as a
disc. Well, one minor carp: Chapter 2 consists of an introductory scene with
De Niro and a gruelling pub bombing incident. Would it really have been too
hard to make that into two chapters? Otherwise, I really can't fault this
disc. Did I mention the bargain price?
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
