Golden Gate Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Golden Gate Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson February 19, 2024

Golden Gate (1993) dramatizes the FBI's pursuit of suspected Communists in San Francisco's Chinatown beginning in 1952 and continuing with the bureau's crackdown of student radical groups at a university campus (which resembles Berkeley) in the late 1960s. It follows in the tradition of "G-men" pictures of the 1930s, I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. (1951), and The FBI Story (1959). The Bay Area's FBI chief (played by Jack Shearer, who does an excellent impression of Hoover) assigns rookie Agent Kevin Walker (Matt Dillon) and his older partner Ron Pirelli (Bruno Kirby) to locate and charge any Chinese immigrants who may have suspicious ties to Red China and Communist activities. They arrest laundryman and labor organizer Chen Jung Song (Tzi Ma), but he's later let go due to a lack of hard evidence. San Francisco's FBI chief is disappointed in the lack of indictments so to impress the bureau, Agent Walker fabricates false evidence to charge Chen. (Kevin had seen a newspaper advertisement with Chen requesting supplies from locals to mail their relatives in China.) He charges Chen as a Communist spy. Chen is tried and convicted. Kevin notices the reaction of Chen's 8-year-old daughter, Marilyn Song (Theresa Huynh), who he sees again after the trial. When Chen is released ten years later from San Quentin State Prison, Pirelli (who's now Agent Walker's supervisor) orders his ex-partner to surveil Chen. Kevin witnesses what a broken man Chen has become, ostracized by his community. He attempts to make amends with Chen but this leads to a climatic chase to the parapet of the Golden Gate Bridge. Kevin feels guilty about what he put Chen through. When he sees an older Marilyn (Joan Chen) through his telescope, he becomes mesmerized by her beauty. (Marilyn is now a law student.) Too embarrassed and guilt-ridden to admit what he subjected her father to, Kevin poses as a lawyer from San Quentin's Public Defender's Office. He explains to Marilyn that he got to know Chen while he was in prison. Kevin and Marilyn begin a romance.

Teri Polo has a relatively small but important role as Kevin's first girlfriend, Cynthia. She asks him if he had to choose between law and justice, what would he choose? Kevin replies "justice" but he abandons it in the first section of the film. The moral dilemma of Dillon's character is how wrestles between the two concepts. I disagree strongly with Michael Mills who, in his review of Golden Gate in The Palm Beach Post, claims that Dillon's behavior doesn't change significantly over the course of the movie. The arc of Kevin Walker's moral conscience is the main strength of Golden Gate.

I was surprised that the critical mass gave Golden Gate mediocre and poor reviews. Critics thought that the film made FBI agents out to be caricatures. In the movie's defense, a lot of agents had anticommunist ideologies that went unchanged. I definitely agree with some of the film's critics that the hairstyle and makeup on Matt Dillon should have made him look older over the narrative's 16-year span.

Golden Gate runs a brisk 91 minutes and given that it portrays three time periods, could have been longer to provide more historical details and develop the characters further. This may not have been the fault of writer David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly). I read that Hwang wrote an early script of Golden Gate as early as 1989 and a production draft is 122 pages long. I have also read that the producers and distributor had planned a brief theatrical window for the picture, anyway, before TV airings and the ancillary market. Golden Gate is a small epic and a gem, too!

Golden Gate Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

MGM has given Golden Gate an MPEG-4 AVC encode on this BD-25. Touchstone Home Video first issued the film on LaserDisc with a pan and scan transfer. It did not reach DVD till 2012 when TGG Direct released it as a double feature on two different releases: one with Dillon's City of Ghosts (on the other disc) and another where it was bundled with Queen and Country on separate discs. I haven't seen the DVD transfers but have watched the LD thrice. I've included screen captures from Touchstone's discs to compare with the Blu-ray. The MGM disc suffers from poor compression. The disc really only uses 18 GB of space and the image certainly suffers. Look at how noisy the alleyway scene is in Screenshot #10. Compression-related artifacts are visible in darker shots. DNR tools have been applied. Check out how pasty faces are in frame grab #s 2, 4, 22, 24, and 26. MGM also "turned on another light" when it prepped the picture for Blu-ray. You'll notice brightness boosting in capture #s 14, 18, 20, and 28. Facial tones have a warmer complexion on the 1080p transfer than they do on the LD. But there is some good news to the HD disc. It's framed in the OAR of 1.85:1 and boasts vibrant hues during the nightclub scenes. Colors are generally well defined on the BD, including the mahogany wood wall paneling in the FBI offices (see capture #5). But fine detail is lacking in long shots. MGM has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 23000 kbps.

Screenshot #s 1-10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, & 30 = MGM 2023 Blu-ray (1.85:1)
Screenshot #s 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, & 31 = Touchstone Home Video 1993 LaserDisc (1.33:1)

MGM has provided ten chapters, which are only accessible on the fly. (The LD has nineteen chapter breaks.)

Golden Gate Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

MGM has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo mix (2112 kbps, 24-bit), which fares better here than the image does. The mix sounds similar to the PCM stereo track on the LD. Words can be clearly heard. Individual sounds are distinct from ones that precede and follow. Elliot Goldenthal's score is one of the best parts of the film. "Bopathonix Hex" and "Whisper Dance" (as the cues are titled on Varèse Sarabande's album) add a lively presence on the Blu-ray's lossless mix. The score's bass is used effectively. Billy Drewes's performance on saxaphone stands out. The score sometimes has a light jazz and bluesy feel. Goldenthal wrote what I believe is a love theme for Dillon and Chen's characters, which is played on bamboo flute, strings, and dulcimer. The score has a nice oriental sound to it. The way the dulcimer is played here reminds me of how Kitaro uses it in Heaven and Earth (1993), which also features Joan Chen. Goldenthal's music and the period songs are well-presented on this DTS-HD MA track.

Optional English subtitles can be switched on through the menu or via remote.

Golden Gate Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Not a single bonus feature is to be found on this disc.

Golden Gate Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Golden Gate is a great-looking movie shot by DP Bobby Bukowski. MGM's Blu-ray contains an inconsistent transfer that's sometimes noisy and other times show grain filtered out. One positive is that colors show their pop in brighter-lit scenes. The film does a solid job of showing how bad Chinese Americans were treated by the feds. A weakenss is that Joan Chen isn't introduced till into the third reel. The film succeeds best in showing the changes Matt Dillon undergoes between the three time periods. It's also worth seeing one of British director John Madden's (Shakespeare in Love) earliest big-screen features. While this is an average transfer on a budget release, I'm slightly inflating my overall review score because I highly doubt that there will be another release of this film for a long time. Golden Gate is DEFINITELY RECOMMENDED.