Disclosure

• Cat.no: D 013575
• Cert: 18
• Running time: 123 minutes
• Year: 1994
• Pressing: 1998
• Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
• Chapters: 44 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital 5.1 (AC-3)
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: English, Arabic, Polish, Greek, Czech, Turkish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Croatian, English for the hearing-impaired
• Widescreen: 2.35:1
• Price: £15.99
• Extras : Scene index, Production Notes, Interactive Menus
  

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  Director:

  Barry Levinson

  (Rain Man, Bugsy, Avalon)

Producers:

Screenplay:

(based on the screenplay by Michael Crichton)

Music:

Cast:

Tom Sanders: Michael Douglas (The Game, Falling Down, Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction)
Meredith Johnson: Demi Moore (G.I. Jane, Striptease, A Few Good Men, Ghost)
Bob Garvin: Donald Sutherland (A Time To Kill, Outbreak, Backdraft, JFK, M*A*S*H)
Susan Hendler: Caroline Goodall (Cliffhanger, Schindler’s List, Hook, White Squall)
Mark Lewyn: Dennis Miller

Disclosureis another in a long-line of big-screen adaptations ofMichael Crichton‘s best-selling novels including Steven Spielberg’sJurassic Park and The Lost World.

Barry Levinson directs Michael Douglas, Demi Moore, Donald Sutherlandand Caroline Goodall, in a tale of corporate intrigue, power, sex andambition.

Douglas plays Tom Sanders, a nice computer manager a nice Seattle-basedelectronics company called Digicom, and everything’s nice..until he discoversthat an ex-girlfriend, Meredith Johnson (Moore) is to be his new boss.As soon as she arrives, she seduces him in a late-night ‘meeting’, but half-waythrough he decides no.

Then a new CD-ROM system called “Arcamax” develops a fault, and obsceneemail messages turn up on his computer system. He suspects that Johnson is theculprit and sues for sexual harrassment.

It may not sound like the plot for a high-suspense thriller, but when the goinggets tough, and the heat begins to rise, all of Sanders’ computer files beginto disappear as he accesses them. Cue a trip inside the computer, via avirtual reality headset, and some superb computer graphics, coupled withexcellent sound FX. Who will win in the end?

Michael Douglas has made a career out of playing the put-uponhusband/career-man whose life is totally up-against-it from a guilty adultererin Fatal Attraction, a cop who has an affair with a possibly murderouslesbian in Basic Instinct, a hard-working, but undervalued, businessmanwho snaps under the pressure of modern life in Falling Down, to asuccessful businessman in The Game whose brother enrols him in somethingthat’s not so much a game, but a race against time to stay alive. Here, he’sjust as good as any of those roles making his character work better than anyother actor could in his situation.

Demi Moore is one of Hollywood’s highest-paid female actresses around,taking the lead roles in an increasing number of films including Ridley Scott’sG.I. Jane where she became the first female army recruit to get pastbasic training and Striptease in which she did exactly that in a bidto fight for custody of her daughter. Other films have seen her amongst theHollywood A-list. In A Few Good Men she starred alongside Jack Nicholsonand Tom Cruise, while Ghost saw her star opposite Patrick Swayze.

Elsewhere in the cast is the always-excellent Donald Sutherland as thePresident of Digicom, with Caroline Goodall as Douglas’s wife who mayor may not stand by her man when push come to shove.

The picture quality is, on the whole, very good indeed. However, there are someartifacts which are noticeable in some scenes, such as in chapters 10-12 whenMichael visits Demi’s office for some late-night overtime. In the slow-movingscenes when they sit together talking, there are prevalent artifacts on thebrown background and occasionally on facial tones. When things speed up andDemi’s insistent about discovering the colour of Michael’s boxer shorts, anyfast movements (Nothing smutty being referred to here – I mean when Michaelrealises he shouldn’t be playing away at home and makes a break for it!) givea strange effect. As someone moves about, their previous position is leftbehind for a split-second – an effect usually left to something like The BionicMan.

I’m pleased that Warner have gone for a widescreen presentation with this disc(as they have with all of the initial releases) because Barry Levinson makesfull use of the 2.35:1 frame, an example coming in chapter 37 when MichaelDouglas is using Digicom’s V.R. machine on left of the picture while DonaldSutherland and colleagues are returning to their room on the right-hand side.As they make their way to the machine, Michael slips into the background andout the door that the others just came through. This is a scene that must havebeen a nightmare to pan-and-scan, not to mention the CGI effects themselves.

Also, some of the computer screens containing lines of text, often vital to theplot, so if this weren’t widescreen they’d get cut off the screen. (BasicInstinct suffered the same problem – watch that one in fullscreen and you don’tget to find out who the murderer is!). Two other scenes which benefit are onewith Douglas and Goodall standing at opposite ends of the screen as a train goespast, both in despair as the trial of the century was about to get underwayand the other is during the first hearing, and is a lingering shot covering allthe main characters so you can see for a brief time exactly what everyone isthinking and feeling from their facial expressions.

If you were watching this film in pan-and-scan you’d lose 43% of the originalscreen image. The disc is also 16:9 enhanced for widescreen TVs.

The Dolby Surround soundmix comes across very clear during the film and isused mainly for ambience as the tension builds between Douglas and Demi; andMorricone’s wonderful score. The disc also features a Dolby Digital AC-3soundtrack which I cannot comment on as I don’t have a suitably-equippedamplifier, but I saw the film in the cinema in Dolby Digital and if the qualityis duplicated here, it should be fantastic.

This disc opens with the Warner logo which can be bypassed by selecting ‘Menu’from the remote control. The main menu is fairly easy to find your way aroundalthough some parts require a few mouse clicks to access some parts and othersquickly pass onto the next part before you’ve had chance to read it so youhave to go back to see it again.

Overall, this film can’t fail in my book with a first-rate cast, someincredible V.R. sequences and some clever use of surround sound in theambience scenes.

Given Warner’s low-pricing of its DVDs, this disc comes well-recommended.It would have been nice to include a trailer and director’s commentary, if suchhas been recorded, but what is available is well worth the asking price.FILM : *****PICTURE QUALITY: ****SOUND QUALITY : ****EXTRAS: ***PACKAGE: ****

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1998.