Most Wanted - DVDfever.co.uk

Most Wanted is what Sgt. James Dunn Keenan Ivory Wayans becomes after life’s turn of events goes disastrously wrong. The film stars with a Nikita-like premise: he is a respected, decorated Gulf War hero and a highly-trained army specialist, but after an accident he is tried and convicted of killing a superior officer. On his way to Death Row, he is given a reprieve, of sorts, by General Adam Woodward Jon Voight on the understanding that he joins a covert assassination squad and assigned to take out corrupt industrialist Donald Bickhart Robert Culp.

Faster than Homer Simpson can say “D’oh!”, Dunn accidentally kills the First Lady and he goes from being the most honoured to Most Wanted. So sets the scene for nearly ninety minutes of chasing while Woodward pretends to be on the good side as well, setting up a team to track Dunn down in full view of every member in authority.

The picture quality is the best thing there is on this disc. Anamorphic and artifact-free as far as I can see, with the film itself presented in its original widescreen ratio of 2.35:1. The average bitrate is an excellent 9.20Mb/s.

The sound is stated on the back of the box as Dolby Digital 5.1. Alas, The Piano had this too but was only ProLogic, just like most of their releases sadly. Not having a DD5.1 setup, I cannot comment on the outcome of Most Wanted in the sound department but it sounds pretty good in Dolby Surround even if it could still be better.

Extras :

Chapters : 12 chapters again and again EiV have provided approximate times for where the chapter breaks occur. This time they’re only an hour ahead, but seem to have spawned timings down to 1/100ths of a second !?! Who’s putting this stuff together? I wouldn’t even have half-a-pint of what they’re on!

Also, like some other recent EiV DVDs, the final chapter crashes my DVD-ROM drive if I try to rewind it for any reason. No DVDs from other distributors have ever done this.

Languages & Subtitles :

English only in Dolby Surround with subtitles. Whoever did the subtitles made a bit of a cockup 40 minutes and 37 seconds into the film as the reference to Charlie’s Angels was meant to be in italics, but the ‘start italics’ flag was missing resulting in “Charlie’s Angels[/I]” as if part of some badly-written HTML website code.

Menu :

The main menu reaches new heights of dullness with a picture of Wayans… and that’s about it as well as standard options for chapters and subtitles.

An anamorphic transfer, like the American release, but we miss out on their isolated music score. In fact, EiV sum up the extras on this disc adequately on the back in their “Added Value” section – it’s empty!

The film may not have the most original plot, but it’s an entertaining no-brainer. Wayans equips himself well, following in the footsteps of his brother Damon (The Last Boyscout, Mo’ Money), while Voight proves that he can still command your attention whatever he appears in. Given the price and lack of extras though, perhaps it’s worth a rental first. FILM : ****½ PICTURE QUALITY : ***** SOUND QUALITY: **** EXTRAS: 0 ——————————- OVERALL: ***½

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Dom Robinson

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.

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