7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A loner moves in to a small Texas town, finds himself a job, and sets about plotting to rob the local bank.
Starring: Don Johnson, Virginia Madsen, Jennifer Connelly, Charles Martin Smith, William SadlerErotic | 100% |
Romance | 32% |
Drama | 13% |
Heist | 1% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
None
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Note: This film is currently only available in this double feature: The Hot Spot / Killing Me Softly.
Shout! Factory is starting to release some double features on Blu-ray which pair tangentially related films together.
Releases like this are almost always a hit or miss proposition, and that turns out to be the case with the two-fer
offering
varied but problematic modern noirs. The better of the two films on this release is undoubtedly Dennis
Hopper’s 1990 opus The Hot Spot, a kind of fetid ménage a trois with Virginia Madsen essaying the kind
of
femme fatale role she seemed fated to play at that stage of her career, Jennifer Connelly as an apparently
innocent young teenage girl who might nonetheless not be as naïve as she seems, and Don Johnson as a used car
salesman who finds his libido torn between the two women. Killing Me Softly is a fitfully ambitious but
ultimately abysmally failed English language outing by legendary Chinese auteur Chen Kaige, who attempts
(pretty much completely without success)
to
infuse the noir genre with a heaping dose of metaphor and an almost soft core porn ambience. Heather
Graham
portrays a woman in an unhappy relationship who more or less stumbles into a tempestuous affair with a mountain
climber played by Joseph Fiennes. Their incendiary interaction leads to a quick marriage, at which point the man’s
troubled
past starts rippling out into both of their lives.
Would you buy a used car from this man?
The Hot Spot is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. It's frankly been several years since I saw this film on the previously released DVD, but I have a fairly clear memory of it being a somewhat brighter presentation than it is on this new Blu-ray. I can't authoritatively state which version most accurately recreates the original theatrical exhibition as I never saw The Hot Spot in a theater (I frankly don't even think it played in my home town, at least that I can recall). The elements here are in very good shape overall, with only some very minor scratching and speckling to report. While the image seems a tad dark to me, colors are very accurate looking and nicely saturated. Everything is rather soft looking, without any real "pop", however, Fine detail is also in the middling range. Grain tends to overwhelm the image in the darkest sequences. This is a frankly mediocre to okay presentation of a similarly scaled film.
The Hot Spot's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix is very good, and is especially nice due to the glut of great source cues Hopper has included in the film. Dialogue is cleanly and clearly presented, and while there's not a lot of "wow" factor in the mix, everything is well prioritized and there's absolutely no damage of any kind to report.
No supplements are offered on this Blu-ray disc.
The Hot Spot is long on mood and character but rather surprisingly short on story and ultimate impact. I personally think things would have been helped immeasurably by trimming the film by at least a half hour and also removing at least one of the sidebar "crimes" (notably one that isn't really even a crime). But there are pleasures to be had here despite the film's generally lackluster feel, including a great turn by Virginia Madsen, who reinvents the femme fatale in her own unmistakable image.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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