6.2 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
When the daughter of a well-known and well-respected base commander is murdered, an undercover detective is summoned to look into the matter and finds a slew of cover-ups at West Point.
Starring: John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe, James Cromwell, Timothy Hutton, Leslie StefansonWar | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
German: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
French (Canada): Dolby Digital 2.0
English, English SDH, French, German
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Simon West of Con Air fame directs the hackneyed The General's Daughter, a classic paint-by-numbers murder mystery offering little incentive to watch, let alone remember. The film cannot overcome excess length, a sluggish pace, and a terribly trite premise. The film seems to posit that a military base setting, kinky sex, and a sprinkling of violence will be enough to hold it together, but alas these elements are simply details within a larger picture that is as uninteresting as it is unoriginal. Perhaps the story worked better as a novel; the film is based on Nelson DeMille's book of the same name, but as it plays on the screen it lacks energy and a sense of purpose.
"Middling" best describes Paramount's 1080p Blu-ray presentation of The General's Daughter. It's a picture stuck in limbo between solid and unspectacular, though its positives generally outweigh the negatives. Most obvious is the image's propensity to flounder at the bottom of "good." The picture holds steady to a basic film-like presentation, delivering oftentimes agreeable detail to faces, clothes, and environments, all under the auspices of a decently rendered natural grain structure. The image has that desirable film-like look to it, but it lacks polish and finesse. It certainly looks a bit aged but not so deteriorated as to appear all that worse for wear. That said, the picture does reveal a fairly steady, if not generally light, barrage of hairs and fibers, spots and speckles, which do betray the age and a source that is not without blemish. Colors favor a warm appearance. The picture takes place in the hot, sticky, and sweaty South and the warmer tones add to the film's general sense of unease. There's never a sense of deep, commanding, vivid color output. Tones are fairly flat and dull but there's enough core depth to satisfy essential requirements. Black levels are nothing special and neither are flesh tones. This is a perfectly watchable presentation but it's also clear that Paramount made use of an old master that has its basics in order but struggles around the edges.
Paramount brings The General's Daughter to Blu-ray with a lackluster Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The presentation is hardly revelatory or even all that adept in delivering much more than an essential sound structure. The audio cues are limp and lazy, lacking much beyond essential sound elements. The track does offer some nice atmosphere -- gently rolling water outside a boat during an interrogation scene at the 66-minute mark, little office space odds and ends in other scenes -- but there is, overall, a general lack of finesse at work. Music plays with decent front end spacing and clarity but even such a core component cannot muster up much life. Gunfire is lacking. There is almost no report of any kind when a gun is fired at the 15-minute mark. Granted it has a sound suppressor on it, but still, it's almost as if the effect is totally silent; it's enough of a sonic gap to draw the listener out of the scene. That's the basic story here: no life, no zip, no punch, no depth. It's a flat trajectory soundtrack with little to offer beyond basic audio cue reproductions and generally well versed dialogue that plays from a natural front center position.
This Blu-ray release of The General's Daughter includes several extras, including an audio commentary track, a featurette, trailers, and deleted
scenes. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover.
The problem with a movie like The General's Daughter is that the film demands its audience take a vested interest in the characters. Here, for as well as they may be performed, there's little sense of attachment to them, little reason to care about past connections, present circumstances, or future consequences. It's a tepid film, well versed in the basic technical details but failing to take hold of its audience and bring purpose to its straightforward narrative yield. Paramount's Blu-ray is rather generic, offering passable but underwhelming video, audio, and supplemental presentations. Rent it.
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