Midnight Express

Dom Robinson reviews

Midnight Express
Distributed by

Columbia TriStar

    Cover

  • Cat.no: CDR 90006
  • Cert: PG
  • Running time: 116 minutes
  • Year: 1978
  • Pressing: 1999
  • Region(s): 2, PAL
  • Chapters: 28 plus extras
  • Sound: Dolby Digital 1.0 (Mono)
  • Languages: English, German
  • Subtitles: 14 different languages available
  • Widescreen: 1.85:1 and Fullscreen 4:3
  • 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
  • Macrovision: Yes
  • Disc Format: DVD 10
  • Price: £19.99
  • Extras : Scene index, Theatrical trailer, Making Of, Filmographies

Director:

    Alan Parker

(Angel Heart, Birdy, Bugsy Malone, Come See The Paradise, The Commitments, Evita, Fame, Mississippi Burning, Pink Floyd: The Wall, The Road To Wellville)

Producer:

    Alan Marshall and David Puttnam

Screenplay:

    Oliver Stone

Music:

    Giorgio Moroder

Cast:

    Billy Hayes: Brad Davis (Chariots of Fire, Cold Steel, Heart, The Player, Rosalie Goes Shopping, A Small Circle Of Friends)
    Susan: Irene Miracle (Inferno, Watchers 2)
    Tex: Bo Hopkins (American Graffiti, The Getaway (1972), More American Graffiti, The Newton Boys, Radioland Murders, Sweet 16, U-Turn, The Wild Bunch)
    Jimmy Booth: Randy Quaid (Bye Bye Love, Caddyshack II, The Choirboys, Get On the Bus, Hard Rain, Independence Day, Kingpin, The Last Detail, The Last Picture Show, Moving, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation, No Man’s Land, The Paper, Quick Change, Texasville, What’s Up Doc?)
    Max: John Hurt (Alien, Contact, The Elephant Man, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, The Field, Frankenstein Unbound, Heaven’s Gate, King Ralph, A Man For All Seasons, Rob Roy, Scandal, Spaceballs, White Mischief, Wild Bill)
    Hamidou: Paul Smith (Crimewave, Dune, Feeling Minnesota, Haunted Honeymoon, The Left-Handed Gun, Maverick, Popeye, Red Sonja)
    Stanley Daniels: Michael Ensign (Chilldren of the Corn 3: Urban Harvest, Ghostbusters)


Midnight Express is the true story of Billy Hayes, played here by Brad Davis, a student arrested at the airport in Istanbul in October 1970 for possession of 2kg of hashish. His girlfriend (Irene Miracle) doesn’t know about his stash, but soon will as the cops drag him away and he is sentenced to over four years in a Turkish hell-hole, Sagmalcilar prison. A new, more harsh judge later ruled that it was not a case of possession, but an attempt to smuggle the drugs back to America and stated that he must serve a life sentence of no less than thirty years.

Before the longer sentence is imposed, Billy decides not to follow a plan of escape by fellow prisoner Jimmy (Randy Quaid), but he throws caution to the wind and attempts to escape with Jimmy and Max (John Hurt, the latter of whom has been in there for seven years by the time the film starts. It’s not an easy task of course, especially when you have the sadistic Rifki watching your every move.

Being a true story we know that Billy finally escapes as the printed notes accompanying this release tell us how he came to write his book about his experience under the title “Midnight Express” – the prison code for escape – and later how this very film came into existence. The final chapter’s title, “Escape To Freedom”, is also a clear indication of the film’s conclusion.


The picture quality is mostly very good with only minor artifacts occasionally onscreen but not noticeable from the usual viewing distance. There’s also the occasional scratch on the print and the odd slight shimmery effect, but overall the quality is enough to warrant a purchase.

The film is available in both widescreen (1.85:1) and fullscreen formats, the average bitrates being 4.26 Mb/s in both cases. The widescreen side is enhanced for 16:9 widescreen televisions – thus allowing for 33% higher resolution. There’s one other thing to note with this disc when you choose which format to watch: the picture formats are on the wrong sides of the disc, or rather the right side. I’ll explain. When you put the disc in your player, like a CD the content you want to play is on the opposite side to the corresponding label. So on a typical DVD containing both formats the side with the widescreen label is actually the fullscreen version and vice versa, but not on this release so don’t be too shocked when you want to watch an anamorphic widescreen film and get the fullscreen equivalent.

Curiously, the sound is in mono only as it was filmed that way, despite surround sound now being an option to film-makers since the year before this film was made. Even so, dialogue is clear and Moroder’s score is surprisingly effective.


Extras :

  • Chapters/Theatrical Trailers : There are the usual 28 chapters for a Columbia release for the 116 minutes of film, which covers most scenes but just a few extra would have been perfect. The theatrical trailer is also included.

  • Languages/Subtitles : There’s two languages on the disc, English and German, both available in Dolby Digital 1.0 (mono), plus subtitles in FOURTEEN languages : English, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Hindi, Hebrew, German, Turkish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Greek and Norwegian.

  • Filmographies : Brief filmographies are available for Brad Davis, Bo Hopkins, Randy Quaid, John Hurt, Paul Smith and director Alan Parker.

  • The Making of… Available on both sides of the disc, an eight-minute ‘making of’ tells how this film came about with comments and an appearance from the real Billy Hayes.

  • Menu : The menu is static and silent but looks very good indeed as each different page looks like a passport, with pictures for cast members on the filmography pages.

    Upon selecting the “Start Movie” option, you’ll first see a “Sony Pictures DVD Center” logo, followed by the copyright logo and then the film itself. No Dolby Digital “trailer” is here even though the mono soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital 1.0.


    Overall this is a fantastic and compelling film with powerful performances from all concerned and I can’t recommend it highly enough. After watching Brad Davis in this film, I must really check out the rest. Alas, he won’t be making any more since he died from an AIDS-related illness in 1991. If he had still been alive, since at times he looks a bit like Kurt Russell, who makes a big career out of the movies, Davis could easily have become a part of Hollywood’s A-list.

    A director’s commentary track would be a nice inclusion to this disc, but what is here is worth the twenty quid and you won’t find any more chapters or extras on the American release.

    One final curiosity: the film is now 21 years old and a video has been re-released, in both fullscreen and widescreen formats, as a “21st Anniversary Edition”, but the DVD is labelled a “20th Anniversary Edition”.

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

    Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.

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