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Dom Robinson reviews
- Cert:
- Cat.no: 05191 DVD
- Running time: 90 minutes
- Year: 1987
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 21 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: 11 languages available
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 5
- Price: £15.99
- Extras: Trailer
Director:
- Joel Coen
(Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, Blood Simple, Fargo, Hudsucker Proxy, Miller’s Crossing, O Brother Where Art Thou?)
Producer:
- Ethan Coen
Screenplay:
- Joel and Ethan Coen
Music:
- Carter Burwell
Cast:
- H.I. McDonagh: Nicolas Cage
Ed: Holly Hunter
Nathan Arizona, Sr.: Trey Wilson
Gale: John Goodman
Evelle: William Forsythe
Glen: Sam McMurray
Dot: Frances McDormand
Leonard Smalls: Randall “Tex” Cobb
Nathan Jr.: T.J. Kuhn, Jr.
The films of the Coen Brothers tend mostly to be either great or terrible. Raising Arizona fits into the former category.
H.I. McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) is repeat offender, forever getting lockedup for robberies. Everytime he’s sentenced and locked up, the girl taking theprison portraits is policewoman Ed (Holly Hunter). After a number ofencounters they fall for each other and get married. However, she has a problemgetting pregnant and so H.I. aims to steal his biggest catch yet – a baby.
But he doesn’t just pick any old baby. He takes one of the famous Arizonaquintuplets fathered by Nathan Arizona, Sr. (Trey Wilson). But settingoff with Nathan Jr. (T.J. Kuhn, Jr.) has problems in itself since they’repursued not only by a couple of H.I.’s fellow convicts, led by Gale (JohnGoodman), but also a Hell’s Angel.
Raising Arizona was one of the early Coen Brothers films, butfeatured not only one of their soon-to-be-regulars, John Goodman, but alsoBarry Sonnenfeld, working here as director of photography and who wenton to direct both the Addams Family films andMen in Black.
Note also that this is one of those films which started off in life with ahigher certificate – 15 in this case – but time passes, Thorin sits down andstarts singing about gold, and now the BBFC have allowed a lower cert with nocuts.
Careful with that grenade…For a 14-year-old film the 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is good but not excellent. It’s colourfulenough though, but does have the occasional small print defects. A remasteredone would’ve been sharper though.The average bitrate is 5.66b/s and doesn’t fluctuate a great deal.
The sound is plain Dolby Surround. Could do with being remastered intoDolby Digital 5.1, since what we have here is too quiet most of the time,plus there aren’t many scenes that really push the boat out in the sonicdepartment.
The only extra is a 2½-minute 4:3 trailer that you’ll watch once.There are 21 chapters to the film which is fine and subtitles in 11 languages:English for the hard of hearing, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian,Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese and Swedish. Menus are static andsilent.
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.