Madsen's
Reservoir Dogs
co-star Harvey Keitel can always be relied upon and he doesn't disappoint, but
does join in with the rest for an overemphasised Southern twang to their
accent. In fact, the only real disappointment is a piece of incredibly trite
dialogue as the girls' end nears, as Keitel shouts to Tobolowsky, "Max, you
gotta do something. How many times has that woman gotta be fucked over?", to
which he replies, "Hey listen! Now pull yourself together and listen to me!
Calm down. Don't make me be sorry I brought you." and Keitel concludes with
"Damn it!". The way it's put together is cringe-making.
It does have an ending which can bring emotions to the surface like the
close of E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial though, an ending which was once
spoofed in The Simpsons, but apparently didn't end that way in the book
since they actually landed on the desert floor, not that I read books much, or
ever.
I nearly missed a chunk of the film when I arrived late to the Showcase Cinema,
Manchester back in the summer of 1991 and had to sit three rows from the front
physically turning my head to see from one side of the screen to the other, but
that's not as much that was missed in the American TV version when Harlan's
derogatory line to Louise, "I said, 'suck my cock'", became "...clean my
clock" (!)
...an explosive combination.
A great film needs a great transfer and that's what we have here. Anamorphic
2.35:1 widescreen, just as it was filmed, with soft, dark appearance adopted
for the scenes that require it and brightly-lit ones looking superb and sharp.
The sound is in Dolby Digital 5.1, which gets used a lot while the girls are
driving about and creates a fantastic atmosphere in the final showdown. The
soundtrack is peppered with songs that are name-checked in the subtitles as
they begin.
Don't get on their bad side...
Having already seen the light of day once in February 2000 with just a director's
commentary and a few meagre extras, this Special Edition adds to the list.
It begins with a 60-minute documentary entitled The Last Journey, split
into seven chapters that tell the story of the film's conception, production
and reaction, with the usual interviews with key cast and crew members
interspersed with 2.35:1 letterboxed film clips. This is follwed by the
Original Promotional EPK, just a 5-minute piece of 4:3 clips mixed in
with brief on-set footage and comments.
Eight Deleted Scenes are included, all in anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen,
but don't expect perfect picture quality. Most of these are quite short, but
there's an extended bedroom scene between Thelma and J.D. running for six minutes.
The Over the Edge multi-angle storyboard sequence isn't quite how it
sounds, since it's one "angle" for the storyboard and another to compare it with
the film shot. The Alternate Ending comes complete with an optional
director's commentary. It's nice to see that it left the way open for some kind
of a continuation, but the one they used was best I think. Also, the change
of music doesn't suit the scene.
There's an overlong 6½-minute Home Video Preview which also dofs
a cap to the NTSC laserdisc release and also contains a short 30-second trailer;
Fans of Glenn Frey will be pleased to see the 4-minute Music Video
for "Part of Me, Part of You"; and there's three TV spots (totalling
two mins and in 4:3) and one theatrical trailer (2 mins, 16:9 anamorphic
widescreen).
Finally, there's an extensive Photo Gallery and Two Audio Commentaries, one
from Ridley Scott and the other from Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon and
Callie Khouri.
There are 32 chapters to the movie, dialogue comes in Dolby Digital 5.1 for
English only, with subtitles in 14 languages: English (with a hard
of hearing option), Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Portuguese, Polish,
Greek, Hungarian, Hebrew, Turkish, Czech, Croatian and Slovenian.
The main menu is animated and scored with the classic theme tune, while the
rest are static and silent.
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
