THE MOVIE

Romeo + Juliet, im sure everyone knows this movie. I love it, and so does my girlfriend, so I might be a bit bias here. This is a contempary version of William Shakesperes Romeo and Juliet set in the present day, but still spoken in the same bard-style english as the original play. I believe this is why many do not like this movie, but for me it does not cause a problem, and actually adds a large dose of atmosphere to the movie.

The cast performs very well, with the following main stars:
Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio)
Juliet (Claire Danes)
Tybalt (John Leguizamo)
Mercutio (Harold Perrineau)
Ted Montague (Brian Dennehy)
Fulgencio Capulet (Paul Sorvino)
Captain Prince (Vondie Curtis-Hall)

The movie starts at a blistering pace with a showdown at a service station between the Montagues and Capulets, and does not really stop till the end of the film. I wont go into the details of the story, as everyone should know this already, but I will say that this is a brilliant interpretation of a timeless story.

THE TRANSFER

Video:

This is a beautiful transfer, presented in 2.35:1 aspect ratio (16x9 enhanced). I did not spot any MPEG artefacts (but there was a few film artefacts that could be seen but they arent a major problem). The video quality is excellent, even during the fast action scenes. The colours at spot on and vibrant throughout the whole movie, with nice strong blacks and shadow levels.

This is a duel layer disc, with the layer change happening at 53:26. This is not very noticable and is well timed, you wouldnt notice it in many cases if you were not sitting there watching out for it.

Audio:

The audio on this disc is outstanding, but only presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 with no other options, but this isnt a concern for most people.

While watching the movie, there was no sync problems with the audio, but later while skipping back and forwards to my favorite scenes it did get a bit out of sync. Stopping and starting the disc did solve the problem, and it didnt happen again. Im putting this down to the player and not a fault of the disc.

One thing that was a bit of a problem was the dialogue volume. It is occationally hard to hear what is being said due to the background noise of the scene (making it even harder to understand at some points due to the bard-style english used).

THE EXTRAS

Hmmm... extras? This disc has an interactive menu, and also the movie trailer. These days I personally dont consider these 'extras', so the disc is a bit of a flop in this department. Considering what could have been done (such as background history on the story by William Shakesphere among other things) this is a big disappointment.

SUMMARY

This is an excellent DVD, good audio and video, plus a brilliant story to go with it. The only downside is the absence of extras on the disc. All in all, I strongly recommend this to anyone (especially to any guys who want to impress their girlfriends / wives... my girlfriend loved it!).