Redford is his usual suarve self, Pitt his usual cocky self and the only other
name, Catherine McCormack, doesn't stretch herself at all, all adding to an
entirely forgettable film. The rest of the cast includes two underused actors:
Larry Bryggman (Bruce Willis' boss in Die Hard with a Vengeance)
as CIA bigwig Troy Folger and British actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste
as Redford's secretary Gladys, sporting a dodgy American accent. There's also a
couple of cameos for
Dale Dye
and Omid Djalili.
Redford and Pitt discuss what to do about the hackneyed script.
However, there's nothing wrong with the audio-visual side of things on this
DVD. The picture's framed at the original 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio
with zero artifacts, while the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is spot-on too, being loud and obtrusive
when it needs to be, usually by sending helicopters in, as well as quiet,
usually in the many, endless boardroom scenes. If I had any complaint with
this, it's that there's a lack of a DTS soundtrack which accompanies the
Region 1 DVD.
The extras begin with a 2-minute Trailer in anamorphic 16:9 and scores
of mini-featurettes about casting the main actors, chat with technical
advisors, a brief part about the suicide bombing scene in Nebaa and a little
bit of info about each location used in the film. However, the featurettes
only total around 23 minutes, plus there's nearly 13 minutes of Deleted
Scenes plus a 7-minute Alternative Ending. The extra footage is
shown in the original 2.35:1 ratio and is anamorphic, but the quality is far
from hot. However, each of the additional scenes come with optional director's
commentary.
There are 20 chapters to the film, subtitles in English only and the menus are
nicely animated and scored.
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
