Jack Walsh: Robert De Niro Johnny "The Duke" Mardukas: Charles Grodin Alonzo Mosely: Yaphet Kotto
Midnight Run
is a comedy-thriller starring Robert De Niro as an unconventional ex-cop
turned bounty hunter who stands to collect $100,000 if he gets the lippy Johnny
"The Duke" Mardukas (Charles Grodin) from New York to L.A. after he embezzled
$15million from the mob. It's just another piece of cake to a bounty hunter, also
known as a Midnight Run.
However, the FBI want The Duke as a government witness and the Mob want him dead,
so things are about to get plenty complicated, especially after he steals FBI agent
Alonzo Mosely's I.D. and poses as him.
There's a fair amount of humour to be found here, most of it revolving around bad
language, but it's one of those films famously to be sliced to bits when shown on TV,
with one of De Niro's lines coming out on that medium as "Shut the HELL up".
I'll leave you to guess what HELL is replaced by...
The picture is presented in a non-anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen ratio, which means
you're losing resolution as you zoom it in to fill the TV screen. It's not
particularly outstanding and there's a layer of grain on this 12-year-old print
which is made worse in dark scenes. The average bitrate is a fairly steady 7.66Mb/s.
The sound is a basic Dolby Surround affair, with little to get excited about.
Extras :
Chapters :
The usual 16 chapters for a Universal-released-through-Columbia film. Not enough.
Languages/Subtitles :
Five surround languages for English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.
Subtitles come in eleven languages: English, French, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Swedish,
Norwegian, Dutch, German, Polish and Czech. However, whoever mastered these stupidly stuck
them within the black bar at the bottom of the screen, so if you zoom the picture in to fill
a widescreen TV, the subtitles get cut off! D'oh!
Menu :
Static and silent. De Niro and Grodin. That's it.
Overall, after reviewing
Jaws earlier this week which
had stacks of extras and a remastered soundtrack, it seems crazy to watch an age-old
print with no extras getting served up for the same price of twenty notes and thus, this
is the sort of disc that makes you realise why Columbia need a budget-priced label.
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
