6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
When Duke Anderson gets out of the cooler, he discovers the mother lode in his rich girlfriend's ritzy apartment building. With help from a safecracker, a decorator, and a thug, Duke might be able to pull off the greatest heist yet.
Starring: Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, Martin Balsam, Ralph Meeker, Alan KingDrama | 100% |
Crime | 4% |
Heist | Insignificant |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
French: Dolby Digital 2.0
English, French
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 2.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Imagine stepping into a world where there's a camera on every corner and up along each wall, where banks of monitors display the most mundane, the silliest, the most serious, the most private of moments of everyday life, where simple phone lines are transformed into complex listening devices, where anyone and everyone could be wired up for sound. That's a Sunday afternoon football game now and a given -- though certainly not always an appreciated or necessary or even warranted or welcome -- way of life in Y2K+13. In 1971, however, it was all pretty much state of the art boogeyman 1984 type of stuff that nobody had ever seen before and had only read about in dystopian novels warning of excess big brother intrusions into privacy. The Anderson Tapes takes the Caper movie and blends it with what was amongst the first of its kind, the high-tech surveillance Thriller. Sure it's all quite tame and silly in hindsight -- shoot, even the terrifying Enemy of the State no longer really seems in the least bit far-fetched or futuristic -- but it's still a chilling, albeit a dated and very goofy, look back at the beginnings of the all-seeing eye and the all-hearing ear, in this film weaved into a tale of how all the wires get crossed and a heist is put into place even when the camera isn't looking the other way.
Real men sleep in pink.
The Anderson Tapes is another Sony titled churned out by the Mill Creek video factory that looks satisfactory-to-good. Generally, the picture enjoys a solid film-like texture, with a grain overlay that's occasionally uneven but never too spiky. Details are fine; this is definitely not a razor-sharp modern film, but the resolution, combined with good source elements, results in crisp, accurate details on clothes, faces, and general backgrounds, particularly the varied apartments throughout the building which open up some visual flavor and variety as they're entered one at a time for the robbery. The hotel lobby also enjoys some nicely defined woods, tiles, and marbles. Colors are neither bold nor dull; the palette is acceptable but certainly not one to provide a beautiful bouquet of exploding color. Wear and tear is minimal, as is banding and other intrusive eyesores. Black levels are fine, ditto flesh tones. It's not the world's best picture, but for what amounts to a decent movie appearing on Blu-ray for single-digit dollars, it's more than acceptable.
The Anderson Tapes features a fairly straightforward DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack. It proves rather shallow, limited not only by the two channel presentation but the underwhelming source. It's very front heavy and oftentimes tinny, with a shallow feel to most everything but dialogue and those godawful piercing electronic sounds that pop in from time to time to transition between scenes or accentuate a moment. Range? What range? This one is almost the sole property of the front-middle; don't expect it to go very wide very often. Fortunately, dialogue is rather smooth and balanced. This is a serviceable track, nothing more, nothing less.
This Blu-ray release of The Anderson Tapes contains no supplemental content.
Modern audiences will be hard-pressed to find a more laughably dated "high-tech" movie than The Anderson Tapes, but that doesn't make it a negative experience in the 21st century world. Quite the contrary, it makes for a nice little compliment and contrast to the sort of 24/7, every-inch-surveyed world that currently exists, showing how technology has come a long way but also that there's been no, or maybe negative, evolution on how it's used to see and hear everything. The goofy "future" font and the annoying beeps and bloops give the film a silly throwback feel to a "simpler" time in the electronic age, ironic considering just how prescient it feels today and how involved a part the electronics play in the movie. The movie finds its best during the heist; there's sometimes a little too much clutter beforehand, but overall it's a solid picture that modern audiences should find appealing after those initial chuckles. Mill Creek's Blu-ray release of The Anderson Tapes features solid video, mediocre audio, and no supplements. Recommended.
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