The Player

• Cert:
• Cat.no: P 8690 DVD
• Running time: 119 minutes
• Year: 1992
• Pressing: 2001
• Region(s): 2, PAL
• Chapters: 24 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: English (for the hard of hearing)
• Widescreen: 1.85:1
• 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 9
• Price: £19.99
• Extras: Trailer, Featurette, Deleted Scenes, Audio Commentary

Director:

Robert Altman

(Gosford Park, Cookie’s Fortune, Dr. T and the Women, The Gingerbread Man, Kansas City, The Long Goodbye, M*A*S*H, Nashville, Pret-a-Porter, The Player, Popeye, Short Cuts, Vincent & Theo)

Producer:

Screenplay:

Music:

Cast:

Griffin Mill: Tim Robbins
June Gunmundsdottir: Greta Scacchi
Walter Stuckel: Fred Ward
Detective Susan Avery: Whoopi Goldberg
Larry Levy: Peter Gallagher
Joel Levison: Brion James

The Playeris Robert Altman‘s movie about making movies, concentrating on oneparticular executive, Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), a hot-shot who hasan eye for commissioning the right project.

Things go awry for him when a writer, spurned six months before, begins tomake death threats against him, leading Griffin to take revenge, put the writerout of his misery – permanently – and then move in on his girlfriend,June Gunmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi). However, when the threats continueGriffin has to contend with the fact that he might have killed the wrongwriter and that the police, led by Detective Susan Avery (Whoopi Goldberg),are on his tail.

There are scores of brief cameos from actors like Malcolm McDowell,Burt Reynolds and James Coburn, plus a clever opening trackingshot lasting approximately eight minutes, but the whole film seems a bit tooclever for itself and winds up being a bit on the boring side.

The DVD is presented in the original 1.85:1 widescreen ratio and is anamorphic,but has plenty of print flecks, appears rather blurred fairly often and neverlooks in any way outstanding.The average bitrate is 6.38Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 9Mb/s.

The soundtrack comes in Dolby Digital 5.1, but isn’t one to stretch yoursystem, only lending itself to some creepy overtones in the score toaccentuate a point in the drama.

For extras there are a 2-minute Trailer, a 17-minute Featurette:Robert Altman – One on One where the man talks about his film andintersperses it with 4:3 clips from the film, Five Deleted Scenestotalling 13 minutes – but none of which would’ve made any extra impact hadthey been left in – and a feature-length Audio Commentary fromdirector Altman and screenwriter Michael Tolkin.

There are 24 chapters through the film, English subtitles for the hard ofhearing and menus which are static, but contain a looped part of the film score.

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


OVERALL