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Dom Robinson reviews

Sea Of Love

In search of a killer,
he found someone
who's either the love of his life...
or the end of it.

Distributed by

Columbia TriStar

Cat.no: UDR 90003
Cert: 18
Running time: 108 minutes
Year: 1989
Pressing: 1999
Region(s): 2, PAL
Chapters: 16 plus extras
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround), Mono
Languages: English, German, Czech, Hungarian, Polish
Subtitles: English, Swedish, Dutch
Fullscreen: 1.33:1 (full frame)
16:9-Enhanced: No
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: DVD 5
Price: £19.99
Extras : Scene index, Theatrical trailer, Biographies, Filmographies, Production Notes.

Director:

Harold Becker

The Boost, City Hall, Malice, Mercury Rising, The Onion Field, Vision Quest

Producers:

Martin Bregman and Louis A. Stroller

Screenplay:
Richard Price

Music:

Trevor Jones

Cast:

Frank Keller: Al Pacino

Carlito's Way, Chinese Coffee, City Hall, Devil's Advocate, Dick Tracy, Dog Day Afternoon, Donnie Brasco, Frankie and Johnny, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Godfather I-III, Heat, Looking for Richard, Scarface, Scent of a Woman, Serpico

Helen: Ellen Barkin

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, The Big Easy, Diner, The Fan, Into the West, Johnny Handsome, Mac, Man Trouble, Siesta, Switch, This Boy's Life, Wild Bill

Sherman Touhey: John Goodman

Always, Arachnophobia, The Babe, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, Blues Brothers 2000, Born Yesterday, The Borrowers, The Big Easy, Fallen, The Flinstones, The Hudsucker Proxy, King Ralph, Matinee, Punchline, Raising Arizona, True Stories

Terry: Michael Rooker

Cliffhanger, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Keys To Tulsa, Mallrats, Tombstone

Black Guy: Samuel L. Jackson

Jackie Brown, 187, Pulp Fiction, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Sea Of Love is a murder thriller starring Al Pacino as Frank Keller, an experienced detective who has been on the force for 20 years. A bizarre female serial killer is doing the rounds executing men, each death being accompanied by a record deck playing a seven-inch single, Sea Of Love by Phil Phillips with the Twilights, the constant use of which results in a disturbing effect.

Accompanying him on the case is fellow detective Sherman Touhey (John Goodman) as the pair set up an operation in a restaurant by placing adverts in a newspaper's 'Lonely Hearts' column in a bid to trap the killer by means of the fingerprint evidence they'll leave behind on a wine glass. Problems are abound when Frank falls in love with prime suspect Helen (Ellen Barkin) and things get worse when the attraction is reciprocated and develops into a full-blown affair, threatening to put his career on the line if his worst fears are confirmed.

The film is presented in full-frame 4:3 as opposed to a widescreen or pan-and-scan transfer. The transfer has a fair bit of grain on it, usually not too distracting but it suffers during the dark scenes. The 4:3 image though looks fine on a widescreen TV zoomed-in to either 14:9 or 16:9. The American DVD release is also fullscreen but a matted widescreen version was released on NTSC Laserdisc in 1990. I haven't seen that disc, but while the 4:3 picture can easily be zoomed-in to 16:9 without fear of losing too much information, no widescreen means no anamorphic.

The average bitrate is 5.21Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 7Mb/s.

The sound on the disc surround at best, since Dolby Digital 5.1 hadn't been invented yet, but it won't set your speakers on fire.

"There's some psycho woman out there killing guys."

Extras :

Chapters and Trailer :

Like another new Universal release, Twins, this disc has only a handful of chapters with 16 spread over 108 minutes which just isn't enough. The theatrical trailer is also included.

Languages and Subtitles :

Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround) is available for dialogue in English, German and Czech, while Hungarian and Polish is mono only. Subtitles are available in English, Swedish and Dutch.

Production notes, Filmographies and Biographies :

The disc contains some interesting production notes, plus biographies and filmographies for Pacino, Goodman, Ellen Barkin and director Harold Becker.

Menu :

Similar to Daylight, Twins and Dante's Peak, the menu is static, with a crisp, deep red picture mirroring the cover on the main menu. Curiously, this was not the original artwork that featured on the film's theatrical and video release. On playing the disc you see the Universal logo and a copyright message before the main menu appears.

Sea Of Love is one of the first Universal DVDs to be released under the Columbia TriStar label and one of two released in 4:3. However, since a matted widescreen version has been released on NTSC laserdisc, a remastered anamorphic DVD wouldn't have gone amiss. In any case, Pacino is on top form as usual, Barkin has never looked better or sexier and the tension in the film creates an atmosphere you could cut with a knife.

This film was the first 18-certificate I saw in the cinema in January 1990, even though I wasn't quite 18 yet (The first legal 18-rated film I saw came four months later on my birthday: Society). When the video was released to buy, it was one of a few films which Universal advertised in magazines with full-page adverts highlighting a line or two from the film in similar fashion to Empire magazine's 'Classic Scenes'.

There are no more extras here than on the American DVD release and it's an excellent film, but a whole twenty pounds is too much for a ten-year-old flick with a second-rate transfer, especially when the video has been released beforehand at a budget price.

FILM	 		: *****
PICTURE QUALITY		: ***
SOUND QUALITY		: ***
EXTRAS			: ***
-------------------------------
OVERALL			: ***½

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.

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