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Dom Robinson reviews

Backdraft

Silently behind a door, it waits.
One breath of oxygen
and it explodes in a deadly rage.
In that instant it can create a hero...
or cover a secret.

Distributed by

Columbia TriStar

Backdraft is the term given to a build of gas and the way it explodes with rage once given a hint of oxygen. It's this type of incident that an arsonist is suspected of setting up all around the city of Chicago.

Stephen (Kurt Russell) and Brian McCaffrey (William Baldwin) are warring brothers, placed on the same team at the former's insistence since his brother is fresh out of graduation. After many part-time jobs, Brian wants to see if he's cut out for a career as a firefighter since you can appreciate him being put off for life when, twenty years ago as a young boy, he saw his own father being killed in the line of duty.

Robert De Niro is arson investigator Donald Rimgale, nicknamed "Shadow", convinced that these extreme fires that are breaking out are as a direct result of arson and he's determined to get to the truth; Scott Glenn is an experienced fireman who has been around the block several times and has worked with both generations of the McCaffrey family; Donald Sutherland is in jail for arson and his cameo proves his character isn't quite all there as he explains his love for creating fire to appear where it shouldn't do; Jennifer Jason Leigh was the love of Brian's life six years ago before he left town. Now he's been back, perhaps they'll get back together, but what won't help is the fact that she's working for Alderman Marty Swayzak (the late, great J.T. Walsh), a man running for town mayor and likely to get it too considering the cutbacks he's made have impressed those in authority, despite him trying to cover up the fact that those cutbacks have led to three people being killed while on duty. Finally, Rebecca De Mornay plays Helen, Stephen's estranged wife and the film also follows their attempts to patch things up.

There's not a single duff performance to be found here in a film that's well written and directed, with Baldwin and Russell convincing as the brothers McCaffrey. The effects are incredible as the fire explodes around town in scenes that were deemed by real-life firefighters as true and realistic.

The picture is mostly free of obvious artifacts, but there is a level of grain present throughout the film. When fire explodes, it still looks good from the usual viewing distance. However, it does lose a point for not being anamorphic and there's no reason for it not to be. It certainly makes history for Columbia as being the first widescreen title that isn't enhanced for widescreen televisions and as such there's no way you can zoom the picture in to almost-fill a widescreen TV while viewing the subtitles, since they appear under the image.

The film was presented in 2.35:1 at the cinema, but this widescreen print is framed at approximately 2.10:1. Having been filmed in Super-35, you don't lose any side information, but gain some picture height. The average bitrate is a very good 7.75Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 9Mb/s.

The sound quality, unlike the picture, is first-rate. Clear dialogue, the creepy movement of the flames, some superb songs from Bruce Hornsby and the Range (The Show Goes On and Set Me In Motion), The Smithereens (A Girl Like You), Cream (Sunshine of Your Love) and Edwin Starr (War). Couple this with powerful score from Hans Zimmer, the main theme from which I recently heard of Classic FM and it still hadn't lost the impact. In fact, it made me wish the disc had come with an isolated score but then it doesn't have much in the way of extras. The sound is available in English with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.

movie pic

When designing the new ACME burglar alarms,
the inventor forgot to carry the one.

Extras :

Chapters :

A mere 16 chapters, the usual from Universal DVDs, cover the 2hr+ film and it could do with at least twice that. There's no trailer to be found.

Languages and Subtitles :

The primary language, English, is available in Dolby Digital 5.1 while the remainder, French, German, Italian and Spanish are in Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround). Subtitles are available in English, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Polish and Czech.

Filmographies, Biographies and Production notes :

Biographies with accompanying filmographies are available for most of the principal actors listed at the top of this review apart from J.T. Walsh, but with an addition for director Ron Howard. A few pages of production notes are also included.

Menu :

Similar to the first batch of Universal releases, the menu is static and silent with a picture mirroring the cover on the main menu while other menus contain pictures of cast members. On playing the disc you see the Universal logo and a copyright message before the main menu appears.

Backdraft is an excellent film, but to justify an eight-year old film as a full price DVD release, it should have come complete with an anamorphic print and copious extras such as a director's commentary which would have given an insight into how the fire scenes were created and the aforementioned isolated music score. Hence, it's difficult to recommend this DVD as it stands at this price and an anamorphic release is on the cards for owners of Region 1-capable machines later this year.

DVD Trivia: Kurt Russell also plays his own father in the opening scene. 

FILM	 		: ****½
PICTURE QUALITY		: **½
SOUND QUALITY		: *****
EXTRAS			: *
-------------------------------
OVERALL			: ***

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.

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