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Dom Robinson reviews
Paramount
- Cert:
- Cat.no: PHE 8025
- Running time: 111 minutes
- Year: 1999
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 17 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Surround
- Languages: English, German, Czech Hungarian
- Subtitles: 15 languages available
- Widescreen: 2.35:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : 2 Theatrical Trailers, 4 Deleted Scenes including Alternate Ending, Featurette, Director’s Commentary
Director:
- Simon West
(Con Air, The General’s Daughter)
Producers:
- Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme
Screenplay:
- Christopher Bertolini and William Goldman
Music:
- Carter Burwell
Cast:
- Warrant Officer Paul Brenner, C.I.D.: John Travolta
Warrant Officer Sara Sunhill: Madeleine Stowe
Lieutenant General Joseph Campbell: James Cromwell
Colonel William Kent: Timothy Hutton
Captain Elizabeth Campbell: Leslie Stefanson
Chief Yardley: Daniel von Bargen
Colonel George Fowler: Clarence Williams III
Colonel Robert Moore: James Woods
It’s not just Bush and Gore who can have problematic Presential election campaigns, but as the competition hots up, Lieutenant General Joseph Campbell (James Cromwell, who has played so many good AND bad guys in his autumn years so that you can never take him at face value) is in line for a vice-presidency.
Slight problem though: his beautiful daughter Elisabeth (Leslie Stefanson) has been murdered. Like Susannah Farnham in Brookside, it’s not a case of the FACT that she’s been offed, but WHO did it and why?
Warrant Officers Paul Brenner (John Travolta) and Sara Sunhill (Madeleine Stowe) are sent in to investigate what becomes a series of cover-ups at the West Point base. They suspect everyone and they suspect no-one amongst a range of chiefs, colonels and captains including Timothy Hutton, Daniel von Bargen, Clarence Williams III and her boss, Colonel Robert Moore (James Woods, who proves yet again that he can act anybody off the screen).
The only downsize – and a lazy one at that – is the plot device about the two leads being old flames, which gives the male half the excuse to trot out the usual sexually-devisive queries during the intermediate years. They dilly-dally around each other for so bloody long that it drags the film down and you wish they’d just fuck and get it over and done with.
The picture is very good indeed, but it doesn’t look quite as pin-sharp as you’d expect. This may be down to the way it was filmed as every seen looks to be shot in the late afternoon/early evening summer sun. It’s presented in the original 2.35:1 anamorphic ratio and the average bitrate is a high 7.26Mb/s, often peaking over 9Mb/s.
As you’d expect for a recent Hollywood film, the sound is in Dolby Digital 5.1. There’s little to get excited about during interrogation or interview scenes, but many others have SFX dotted about, even if it’s helicopters flying around the speakers.
Extras :
First off is a just-over-two-minute Theatrical Trailer and a 60-second Teaser Trailer, plus four deleted scenes including an alternate ending and two romantically-charged scenes between the two leads.
The 19-minute Featurette contains the usual mix of clips and interviews, while the extras are completed with a Director’s Commentary.
There’s not enough chapters to the disc, just 17, but everything you see and hear here is the same as the Region 1 DVD. A couple of times I thought there might be a slight cut to the film, but the BBFC lists no such thing and if it was edited, gone would be the commentary track.
English and German dialogue are in Dolby Digital 5.1, with the other languages getting surround only. Subtitles are available in English (and hard of hearing), Arabic, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Icelandic, Norwegian Polish, Romanian, Swedish and Turkish, plus subs describing the commentary tracks in English and German.
I was really looking forward to this film after the high-octane action fest that was Con Air, but this is a very pedestrian thriller with not much in the way of thrills themselves. The 18-cert is mainly in place because of the unnecessarily over-graphics rape scenes.
Rent it if you must watch another film where someone’s killed, everyone’s interviewed, a key suspect tops his/herself, as it should be seen in 2.35:1, not cropped to 4:3 on Channel 5 when it comes on TV, but don’t buy it.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.