THE MOVIE

Gino (Steven Seagal) is a cop who is out to avenge the death of his best friend and fellow cop Bobby, who is shot by a drug crazed gangster, Richie (William Forsythe) . Working the "old neighbourhood", Gino is determined to catch Richie and hold him accountable for the murder of this best friend.

With the help of police captain (Jerry Orbach), Gino must put the scum behind bars and return peace to the streets.

Seagal with his impressive Aikido skills commands the show.

THE TRANSFER

Video:

This movie was made in the early 90's, and it seems the archiving procedures around that time weren't so crash hot.

The most obvious characteristic of this transfer to DVD is it's lack of clarity. Artificial enhancement seems to have been used to make up for some flaws in the original materials.

The picture is fairly dark being set in-doors or at night mostly. Shadow detail is pretty lackluster which is dissappointing as many scenes have more detail than this transfer communicates.

Colours are slightly muted and generally feel 'soft'.

Telecine wobble was apparent throughout the movie, but was not too bad as to destroy your enjoyment.

Compression was once again from Warner, left at fairly low bit-rates, translating into occasional still-background artefacts, but you'd have to look for them to notice.

Audio:

Well, the back-cover states that this is a 5.1 channel mix, but I'm sure this has been remixed from an original surround encoded stereo soundtrack.

Sound effect were confusingly placed occasionaly in the centre speaker, then at other times, off to the left or the right front channels for no apparent reason.

Dynamic range appeared to be very limited, but I suspect this was due more to budget constraints during production than any shortful of the part of the DVD. Gunshots were harsh to say the least, and car tyres and engines were very artificial and obviously overdubbed.

Dialogue, although at times obviously ADR produces, was never out of synch. A few scenes had some level problems with the centre channel, but they never say anything overly important in the movie anyhow. :)

Generally, this 'sounds' like it was made cheaply, and my bet is that it was.

THE EXTRAS

No extras on this disc.

SUMMARY

Guys, this is not a movie to impress the ladies. It is full of violence and lots of disgusting scenes that made me squirm.

This is obviously an early film for Seagal but overall he doesn't do too bad. There is a fair amount of fighting in this movie and Seagal seems to be a natural in this area. Jerry Orbach from televisions Law and Order makes an appearance as Seagal's partner (if he hadn't been in Dirty Dancing I would say he has been type-casted).

I wouldn't suggest this disc for the family collection, but those single guys I'd suggest renting it first.