5.9 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
An FBI agent works to uncover an All-American family as Soviet sleeper agents and gets caught up in friendship with their unaware son, Jeffrey Grant.
Starring: Sidney Poitier, River Phoenix, Richard Jenkins, Caroline Kava, Richard BradfordThriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-2
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
1536 kbps
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
After more than a decade away from acting, Sidney Poitier decided to return to the silver screen with a co-starring role in Richard Benjamin's Little Nikita (1988). Press interviews with Poitier at the time indicate that the Oscar winner had read around 200 scripts in the intervening years and couldn't find anything that genuinely piqued his interest. However, as he continued reading through a draft of Little Nikita, he got more and more enthusiastic about the role he would play. Poitier starred opposite River Phoenix, who was emerging as a big young star after critically acclaimed performances in Stand By Me (1986) and The Mosquito Coast (1986). According to biographer Barry C. Lawrence, Phoenix got along very well with Poitier on and off the set; the two made some of the most glowing comments and laudatory compliments about the other's acting abilities. The same could not be said about Phoenix's sometime distant relationship with director Richard Benjamin. Phoenix told various folks that Benjamin treated him like a child because he wasn't allowed to see the daily rushes. Although Phoenix felt that his performance in the film was uneven, he acknowledged that Benjamin was more communicative with him on the set as the director gave him clear guidance about what he wanted the actor to do.
Little Nikita is set during a period where there appears to be improved relations between the US and the Soviet Union. (In the scene at the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, there is TV footage of one of Reagan and Gorbachev's summits.) John Hill and Bo Goldman's screenplay, however, establishes and maintains that tension still exists between the two superpowers. For example, renegade double agent Scuba (Richard Lynch) is portrayed as a ruthless shark, taking out Russian "sleeper agents" who have been living in America for a while. It seems that Scuba's motive, besides being just a remorseless killer, is that these clandestine Soviet spies know too much about the Motherland and may report their intel secrets to American authorities. KGB agent Konstantin Karpov (Richard Bradford) is sent from the Mexico City embassy to San Diego in order to placate the situation and repatriate Scuba back to Russia. However, there are other elements at play. FBI agent Roy Parmenter (Poitier) has a personal vendetta against Scuba because he bumped off Parmenter's partner twenty years prior. Roy and Konstantin also have a history together and their paths are destined to cross once again.
The human and emotional center of the story is Jeffrey Grant (Phoenix), a bright high school senior who has several friends and his own car. Grant's parents, Richard Grant (Richard Jenkins) and Elizabeth Grant (Caroline Kava), are respected citizens in their community but have brought a past with them from Russia that Jeff does not know about. Hill and Goldman's script uses a plot device so Roy can arrange a meeting with Jeff. Jeff has aspirations of joining the Air Force so Roy poses as a AF major upon the youngster's visit to the site. Soon Roy moves into an older house across the street from the Grants in order to keep tabs on them. Indeed, Roy fears that Scuba and/or Konstantin are after the Grants.
FBI agent Roy Parmenter confronts the Grants in the greenhouse.
Mill Creek Entertainment has licensed Little Nikita from Sony Pictures and brought Benjamin's movie to Blu-ray for the first time. The Minneapolis-based indie label presents the film in the aspect ratio of 1.78:1, which opens up the original ratio of 1.85:1. This is an odd decision on Mill Creek's part since they essentially recycled the 2002 Columbia/Tri-Star DVD, which was in the native 1.85:1. I would almost say that this is an upconversion of the DVD picture since this BD-25 uses the antiquated MPEG-2 codec and displays a similar image without any additional restoration work. The dust speckles percolating around the lady on the old Columbia logo are a telling sign of what is to come. There are intermittent speckles and reel change marks throughout but thankfully not in every shot. I do remember the DVD showing a bit more dirt and this BD transfer doesn't appear to have as coarse of a grain structure (though grain is retained). The picture does benefit from the added resolution (with a healthy bitrate of 30000 kbps) and colors appear pretty decently rendered, if unspectacular. I wasn't hoping for any miracles but Mill Creek could have expunged the glaring defects on the print. An average transfer but a step up from the DVD.
Mill Creek improves in the audio department with a clean PCM 2.0 Stereo mix. The sound track is very well balanced with decent depth for a 1988 recording. The film is in English save for a scene including Russian dialogue in which there are burned-in English subtitles. The front channels show a little separation during the action scenes and when a aircraft carrier takes off. The original master is in good shape as evidenced by the lack of analog noise or auditory dropouts on the track. Note that during the main titles, there is a performance by the town's marching band of Bruce Broughton's main theme from Silverado, which was a Columbia production three years earlier. This piece went unacknowledged in the final soundtrack credits.
Mill Creek has supplied optional English subtitles for the feature.
The Columbia DVD included an original theatrical trailer for Little Nikita as well as two bonus trailers. There is zilch on this disc. Mill Creek only includes a mini-menu with an option to play the film and choose subtitles.
Little Nikita is an enjoyable Cold War thriller if you can get past the absurd plotting and formulaic story. I was disappointed that Mill Creek did next to nothing with Columbia's old transfer and would expect that a different label could easily best this edition. The movie isn't great or memorable but still deserves a new 2K scan for its stellar cast. Hopefully, more of River Phoenix's films will come to Blu-ray, particularly Sidney Lumet's superior Running on Empty (1988). (Where are you Warner Archive Collection?) The disc is as bare bones as they come but fans of Poitier and Phoenix may want to add it to their digital collections. A MILD RECOMMENDATION for Little Nikita.
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