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Dom Robinson reviews

Rogue Trader

The story of Nick Leeson

Distributed by

Cert:
Cat.no: P 8993 DVD
Running time: 97 minutes
Year: 1999
Pressing: 2000
Region(s): 2, PAL
Chapters: 20 plus extras
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround)
Languages: English
Subtitles: English
Fullscreen: 4:3
16:9-Enhanced: No
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: DVD 5
Price: £19.99
Extras : Scene index, Theatrical Trailers, Audio-Descriptive Track

Director:

James Dearden

Producers:

James Dearden, Paul Raphael and Janette Day

Screenplay:

James Dearden

Music:

Richard Hartley

Cast:

Nick Leeson: Ewan McGregor

Lisa Leeson: Anna Friel

Simon Jones: Pip Torrens

Ron Baker: Nigel Lindsay

Rogue Trader is the story of Nick Leeson, the English stockmarket trader who brought down the Barings Bank in Singapore by overplaying his hand more than once too often.

For a story that everyone will know about, unless you've had your head under a rock during the Nineties, it moves along quite quickly and keeps your interest as Nick, played by Ewan McGregor who looks nothing like the original, meets up with the Austroilian Lisa (Anna Friel) and gets married. Everything's on the up and Nick's been allowed to control his own team of stockmarket brokers who he has to hire, train and fire, if necessary.

Things start going downhill when he starts trading under his own secret, illegal account, which is a big no-no in these circles. He makes some losses, recoups his cock-ups, then goes for broke and... loses £50 million in one day (this is no secret as the trailer makes a big mention of it - oh and it's a true story :)

Throughout the course of the film he has to appease his boss, Simon Jones (Pip Torrens), the money 'men' Ron Baker (Nigel Lindsay) and Brenda Granger (Betsy Brantley), his assistant Bonnie (Irene Ng) and potential super-clients such as Pierre Beaumarchais (Yves Beneyton)

I don't really want to say too much about the plot as most of you will know it and for anyone sitting down to watch it, it's a drama that's best left to unfold at its own pace.

Whereas the Americans are blessed with an anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen ratio, as per the original cinema release, Pathe have done us a disastrous turn and offer up just a plain old 4:3 open-matte version which doesn't particularly stand out in any way, even if most of the print is free of flecks. The average bitrate is an okay 5.49Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 9Mb/s.

The sound is basic Dolby Surround - the format in which it was filmed - and there's no real complaints but your speakers never get chance to have much of a workout although there are some music highlights in the form of Leftfield, Travis, The Manic Street Preachers and Jean Michel-Jarre's Oxygene, which I've incidentally been listening to again in the past couple of weeks before I knew it was featured on the soundtrack.

Extras :

Chapters :

20 chapters over 97 minutes, so just enough, but I never say no to more.

Languages and Subtitles :

There's just one language on this disc - English, with subtitles in the same language.

And there's more :

Not a great deal though. The Original Theatrical Trailer and an Audio-Descriptive track, narrated by Lindsey Smith (who she?). These things are still pretty rare, but they describe what's going on vocally to the visually-impaired. In this case, the narrator seems rather too close to the microphone and the voice comes out rather too loud.

Menu :

Some subtle animation with a bit of music from the film, but nothing to get over-excited about.

Overall, this is a more enjoyable film than I thought it was going to be but here, especially in 4:3 format, it feels like it plays out in the style of a Channel 5 TV movie. The lack of extras and the fact that a widescreen version was not used make this a very difficult disc to recommend as, film-wise, it offers nothing more than the video which costs just £10.99.

Surprisingly, the back cover just states "Special Feature: Original Theatrical Trailer" and just tucks away the mention about the disc being audio-described, which surely takes a lot more effort to put together than a simple trailer?

For those who did enjoy it, visit the Competition page to win a copy of the film on DVD from Monday 7th August until Friday 18th August.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2000.

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