Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Desperate Hours Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov May 1, 2016

Michael Cimino's "Desperate Hours" (1990) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of independent distributors Shout Factory. The supplemental features on the disc include an original theatrical trailer for the film and archival featurette with cast and crew interviews. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

You think before you act

Michael Cimino’s Desperate Hours is loosely based on the famous novel by Joseph Hayes which was first made into a film by William Wyler in 1955. Ted Kocheff also used Hayes’ novel for a fairly modest TV production in 1967.

Mickey Rourke plays the dangerous gangster Michael Bosworth who has been captured by the police and is about to get a tough sentence that could keep him in jail for the rest of his life. While he is in court, his sexy attorney (Kelly Lynch, Road House) secretly hands him a gun and he manages to escape. His brother Wally (Elias Koteas, Exotica) and good friend Albert (David Morse, The Crossing Guard) then pick him up and drive him away before anyone can figure out what is going on.

Their plan is to find a safe place, wait for the lawyer to join them and then head down to Mexico. Michael can barely wait because he has fallen madly in love with the lawyer and is ready to start a new life with her.

They choose a quiet house in a beautiful suburb and take Nora (Mimi Rodgers, Someone to Watch Over Me), her daughter and son hostage. Nora’s husband, Tim (Anthony Hopkins), who has started seeing a different woman and left the family, is also captured when he unexpectedly appears with gifts for the kids. For a while, everyone remains relatively calm, but when the police begin tracking down the lawyer tensions rise, and Michael is forced to abandon the original plan and begin improvising.

Cimino’s film will likely disappoint anyone expecting to see a strong remake of the original film with Humphrey Bogart. Excluding the basic elements of the original story which are fairly similar, Desperate Hours is very much a film with unique characters and identity.

The film is structured as a chamber play that allows its big stars to shine without distractions. (There are only a couple of sequences with brilliant panoramic shots that remind of Cimino’s classic dazzling style). However, in a way, it feels like a boxing match without any rules. Rourke and Hopkins are forced into the middle of the ring and then left to exchange punches in ways that could be both fascinating to behold and quite perplexing at the same time. Their acting styles are so different that when they clash it frequently looks like they are either forced out of their comfort zones or unable to fully control their emotions. There is tremendous energy on display that at times threatens to collapse the entire film.

The lack of conventional structure and balance, however, also gives the film a special, borderline surreal atmosphere. It is not at all difficult to predict how it would end, but there are plenty of genuine surprises in the middle where its stars are let loose. There are plenty of plot holes as well, but their relevance is largely eliminated because at this point the boxing match is already well underway. What matters is the precision of the punches; the stronger and more atypical they are, the more effective the entire film begins to look.

There have been rumors that the current version of the film isn’t the one Cimino wanted. According to different sources, the film’s producers were largely responsible for it.

Desperate Hours Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Michael Cimino's Desperate Hours arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout Factory.

I could not see any dramatic differences between Carlotta Films' release and this release of Desperate Hours. In fact, it appears that both have been sourced from the same master. This is good news because I think that the film looks quite wonderful in high-definition. Close-ups typically boast good depth and even when light is restricted background details and nuances are easy to identify. Shadow definition can be improved, but there are no serious anomalies on the current master. The primary colors are stable and healthy. With a new scan some nuances will be expanded, but the current balance is convincing. There are no traces of recent degraining or sharpening corrections. The encoding on the French release is slightly better and as a result grain does appear a bit better defined there, but even on large screens it isn't easy to spot major discrepancies. Overall image stability is excellent. Finally, there are no distracting large debris, cuts, damage marks, or stains to report in our review. My score is 3.75/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Desperate Hours Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: English LPCM 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature.

The basics are very good. David Mansfield's intense score easily opens up key sequences from the film. During the shootouts sharpness and clarity are also very good. If the audio is fully remastered in the future perhaps some minor balance optimizations can be performed in the mid- and/or high-registers, but the improvements should be very small. The dialog is clean, stable, and easy to follow.

Desperate Hours Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer - original theatrical trailer for Desperate Hours. In English, not subtitled. (2 min, 1080i).

• Featurette - an archival promotional featurette with short comments from director Michael Cimino and cast members. Also included is raw footage from the shooting of the film. In English, not subtitled. (6 min, 1080i).

Desperate Hours Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I am a big admirer of Michael Cimino's work and frequently revisit his films. I have discovered that the older they get, the clearer it becomes that they all have special identities that immediately separate them from the many other films that competed with them, looked right and were praised by the critics because they did. Whether this is enough to consider them good or great is something that will likely be debated for as long as these films are available to see, but I think that it is largely irrelevant. There will always be people who will appreciate what Cimino's films offer and respect the fact that they never tried to play by the conventional rules. Desperate Hours is a flawed but fascinating to behold film which should appeal mostly to people who already like Cimino's fluid style. The film is included in this two-disc set together with Stuart Rosenberg's The Pope of Greenwich Village. RECOMMENDED.