Rogue Trader

• 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:

Screenplay:

Music:

Cast:

Nick Leeson: Ewan McGregor
Lisa Leeson: Anna Friel
Simon Jones: Pip Torrens
Ron Baker: Nigel Lindsay

Rogue Traderis the story of Nick Leeson, the English stockmarket trader who brought down theBarings 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 rockduring 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 withthe Austroilian Lisa (Anna Friel) and gets married. Everything’s on the upand Nick’s been allowed to control his own team of stockmarket brokers who he has tohire, 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, thengoes for broke and… loses £50 million in one day (this is no secret as the trailermakes 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 PierreBeaumarchais (Yves Beneyton)

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

Whereas the Americans are blessed with an anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen ratio, asper the original cinema release, Pathe have done us a disastrous turn and offer upjust a plain old 4:3 open-matte version which doesn’t particularly stand out in anyway, even if most of the print is free of flecks. The average bitrate is an okay5.49Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 9Mb/s.

The sound is basic Dolby Surround – the format in which it was filmed – and there’sno real complaints but your speakers never get chance to have much of a workoutalthough there are some music highlights in the form of Leftfield, Travis, The ManicStreet Preachers and Jean Michel-Jarre‘s Oxygene, which I’veincidentally been listening to again in the past couple of weeks before I knew it wasfeatured on the soundtrack.

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 5TV movie. The lack of extras and the fact that a widescreen version was not usedmake this a very difficult disc to recommend as, film-wise, it offers nothingmore than the video which costs just £10.99.

Surprisingly, the back cover just states “Special Feature: OriginalTheatrical Trailer” and just tucks away the mention about the discbeing audio-described, which surely takes a lot more effort to put togetherthan a simple trailer?

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

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


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