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Dom Robinson reviews
Polygram
- Cat.no: 055 070 2
- Cert: 18
- Running time: 112 minutes
- Year: 1997
- Pressing: 1999
- Region(s): 2, 4 (UK PAL)
- Chapters: 22 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English, French
- Subtitles: English, French, Dutch
- Widescreen: 1.85:1; Fullscreen: 4:3
- 16:9-enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £17.99
- Extras : Scene index, Booklet
Director:
- Joel Coen
(Barton Fink, Blood Simple, Fargo, Hudsucker Proxy, Miller’s Crossing)
Producer:
- Ethan Coen
Screenplay:
- Joel and Ethan Coen
Music:
- Carter Burwell
Cast:
The Dude: Jeff Bridges (Against All Odds, American Heart, Blown Away, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Fisher King, The Last Picture Show, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Vanishing (1993))
Walter Sobchak: John Goodman (The Babe, Barton Fink, The Borrowers, The Flinstones, King Ralph, Matinee, Raising Arizona, True Stories)
Maude Lebowski: Julianne Moore (An Ideal Husband, Boogie Nights, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Psycho (1998), Short Cuts, Vanya on 42nd Street)
Donny: Steve Buscemi (Airheads, Con Air, Desperado, Escape From L.A., Fargo, In The Soup, Kansas City, Living In Oblivion, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Things To Do In Denver…, Trees Lounge)
The Big Lebowski: David Huddleston (Blazing Saddles, The Greatest)
Uli: Peter Stormare (Armageddon, Fargo)
Jesus Quintana: John Tuturro (Barton Fink, Being Human, Brain Donors, Clockers, Fearless, Girl 6, Mac, Miller’s Crossing, Quiz Show, State of Grace)
Jackie Treehorn: Ben Gazzara (The Bridge At Remagen, The Killing Of a Chinese Bookie, Road House, The Spanish Prisoner)
Knox Harrington: David Thewlis (Black Beauty, Dragonheart, The Island of Dr Moreau, Life Is Sweet, Naked, Seven Years In Tibet, TV: “Prime Suspect 3”)
The Stranger: Sam Elliott (Fatal Beauty, Gettysburg, Mask, Road House, Sibling Rivalry, Tombstone)
The Big Lebowskiis the Coen Brothers’ take on a tale of mistaken identity mixed with a passionfor ten-pin bowling. Jeff Bridges plays Jeff Lebowski, aka The Dude -his bowling handle, an unemployed bum with no prospects and zero future. Hispin pals are Walter Sobchak (John Goodman), a Vietnam veteran, stillbordering on the obsessive side with his behaviour, which is perfectlydemonstrated early on when he thinks a rival bowler has walked across the foulline resulting in him brandish his pistol and the police being called; andDonny (the excellent Steve Buscemi), the more care-free and laid-backmember of the trio who seems to have little to do throughout most of the filmother than to offer his observations on life and the situations they placethemselves in, only to be told to shut up by Walter.
The Dude’s home life isn’t the most extravagant. A small, smelly flat with fewpersonal belongings of worth is all he has, but this is about to be reducedwhen two men arrive to smash the place up and pee all over his rug, on theorders of their boss Jackie Treehorn, demanding back the large amount of moneythat his girlfriend spent… Now hang on. Girlfriend? Money? Those are two things that TheDude does not possess and he eventually traces the real Big Lebowski who theyare trying to contact in an attempt to resolve the situation.
In addition to the main characters are Julianne Moore as the BigLebowski’s daughter Maude, who takes pity on Jeff’s situation, John Tuturroas manic, rival bowler Jesus Quintana, Ben Gazzara as Jackie Treehorn,David Thewlis as Maude’s doctor, Knox Harrington, the Coen Brothers’favourite Peter Stormare as one of three extreme nihilists who onlyserve to make life hell for The Dude and Sam Elliott as narrator ofthe piece, The Stranger, with two cameos to his credit.
There is a serious problem with the picture on this release, in that in somescenes there are obvious artifacts on view in the form of glitches onscreen,the first occurrence coming in the opening scene with Jeff Bridges in asupermarket. It happens where stationary pixels onscreen are next to movingones – the method used for compressing the data on DVDs – but it doesn’t workquite well here and when there’s a slow pan the effect is obvious.
The average bitrate is a so-so 4.32Mb/s and the disc is 16:9-enhanced forwidescreen televisions. The widescreen version is framed in the original aspectratio of 1.85:1 while a fullscreen option is also available for those withhorizontally-challenged televisions.
The sound is a lot better though. Dolby Digital 5.1 in two languages which doesgreat justice to everything that passes through your speakers including songssuch as the Gipsy Kings’ cover version of The Eagles’ “Hotel California”and an original Kenny Rogers with “Just Dropped In To See What ConditionMy Condition Was In”.
Extras :
An English and French language soundtrack are both available in Dolby Digital5.1 plus subtitles for the same, with an extra subtitled language in Dutch.The subtitles cover all the dialogue, but none of the songs heard.
The menu is rather bland as the options barely go beyond choosing screen format,menu languages and scene selection. There’s no extras to select onscreen asany biogs are in the booklet.
Another thing to note is that on playing the disc you can’t skip past thecopyright info. Selecting “Play Movie” brings up the Polygram logo.
Overall, this is a very watchable and engaging film for the two hours you’llspend watching it, but whether you’ll go back for more is another matter asit’s not a film that cries out to be seen time and time again. For me, CoenBrothers films tend to be hit-or-miss usually, but this one falls inbetween.The hallucinating sequences for Jeff Bridges are brilliant but the rest lessso. Goodman goes nicely over the top when required, but Buscemi doesn’t getnearly enough to do, so if I had to watch one of their films again I’d stillchoose Fargo or Barton Fink.
What’s most notable about this release is that, to my knowledge, it’s the firstever single-sided dual-layer DVD released in the UK with both picture formatson the **same side of the disc**. Usually, releases containingboth versions will be on opposite sides of the disc but this breaks the trend.It’s a more welcome move, but on a technical note, I’d rather the fullscreenversion be scrapped altogether if it means the widescreen version remainingcan benefit from higher bitrate, resulting in a better picture.
Also, Polygram have missed the boat in giving this ground-breaking moment somedecent extras whereas the Region 1 (USA) disc includes a 30-minute interviewwith the Coen brothers about the making of the film. It’s similarly galling tonote that the PAL VHS widescreen release also includes a ‘making of’ which maybe this one, but it’s nowhere to be seen on the UK DVD release.FILM : ***PICTURE QUALITY : ***SOUND QUALITY: *****EXTRAS: *——————————-OVERALL: ***
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.
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.