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Dom Robinson reviews

Disclosure

Sex is Power

Distributed by
Warner Home Video

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

Director:

Barry Levinson

Rain Man, Bugsy, Avalon

Producers:

Barry Levinson and Michael Crichton

Screenplay:

Paul Attanasio

based on the screenplay by Michael Crichton

Music:

Ennio Morricone

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

Disclosure is another in a long-line of big-screen adaptations of Michael Crichton's best-selling novels including Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park and The Lost World.

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

Douglas plays Tom Sanders, a nice computer manager a nice Seattle-based electronics company called Digicom, and everything's nice..until he discovers that 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-way through he decides no.

Then a new CD-ROM system called "Arcamax" develops a fault, and obscene email messages turn up on his computer system. He suspects that Johnson is the culprit and sues for sexual harrassment.

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

Michael Douglas has made a career out of playing the put-upon husband/career-man whose life is totally up-against-it from a guilty adulterer in Fatal Attraction, a cop who has an affair with a possibly murderous lesbian in Basic Instinct, a hard-working, but undervalued, businessman who snaps under the pressure of modern life in Falling Down, to a successful businessman in The Game whose brother enrols him in something that's not so much a game, but a race against time to stay alive. Here, he's just as good as any of those roles making his character work better than any other 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's G.I. Jane where she became the first female army recruit to get past basic training and Striptease in which she did exactly that in a bid to fight for custody of her daughter. Other films have seen her amongst the Hollywood A-list. In A Few Good Men she starred alongside Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, while Ghost saw her star opposite Patrick Swayze.

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

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

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 makes full use of the 2.35:1 frame, an example coming in chapter 37 when Michael Douglas is using Digicom's V.R. machine on left of the picture while Donald Sutherland 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 and out the door that the others just came through. This is a scene that must have been 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 the plot, so if this weren't widescreen they'd get cut off the screen. (Basic Instinct suffered the same problem - watch that one in fullscreen and you don't get to find out who the murderer is!). Two other scenes which benefit are one with Douglas and Goodall standing at opposite ends of the screen as a train goes past, both in despair as the trial of the century was about to get underway and the other is during the first hearing, and is a lingering shot covering all the main characters so you can see for a brief time exactly what everyone is thinking and feeling from their facial expressions.

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

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

Extras :

Chapters :

There are 44 chapters spread throughout the film which is superb, giving a large choice of scenes with which to get instant access, the best ones featuring the V.R. CGI sequences. However, you're probably better off using the Explore function on the on-screen remote control as the "Jump To A Scene" index only allows jumping to 9 particular scenes throughout the film plus "Start Movie" and "End Credits", whereas every other DVD I've seen with scene access lists groups of scenes after which you select one from that group. Why Disclosure has a different approach is very odd.

Cast and Production Notes :

Brief biographies and filmographies are given for the principal cast members and director. There are also three pages of notes which give a small insight to some aspects of the film.

Film Flash :

Recommendations for four other Warner Bros. films - Body Heat, The Pelican Brief, Last Tango In Paris and Outbreak. Years of release are also given on this screen but the pictures given have been jumbled up with the years given.

Languages :

English is the only language on the disc, but there are subtitles for the following languages: English, Arabic, Polish, Greek, Czech, Turkish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Croatian and English for the hearing-impaired.

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 around although some parts require a few mouse clicks to access some parts and others quickly pass onto the next part before you've had chance to read it so you have to go back to see it again.

Overall, this film can't fail in my book with a first-rate cast, some incredible V.R. sequences and some clever use of surround sound in the ambience 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 such has been recorded, but what is available is well worth the asking price.

FILM	 			: *****
PICTURE QUALITY			: ****
SOUND QUALITY 			: ****
EXTRAS				: ***
PACKAGE				: ****

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1998.

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