6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Steve Everett is an Oakland journalist recovering from alcoholism, who is assigned to cover the execution of convicted murderer Frank Beechum. Everett discovers that Beechum might be innocent, but has only a few hours to prove his theory and save Beechum's life.
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Isaiah Washington, LisaGay Hamilton, James Woods, Denis LearyCrime | Insignificant |
Drama | 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 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Italian: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
German: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 2.0
Czech: Dolby Digital 2.0
Polish: Dolby Digital 2.0
Japanese: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish DD 2.0=Latin; Japanese is hidden
English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, Korean, Polish, Thai
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
All directors have clunkers on their résumés, and Clint Eastwood is no exception. Adapted from a successful novel by crime writer Andrew Klavan and released in March 1999, True Crime failed to earn back its production cost. Though it's not hard to see what attracted Eastwood to the material, the film has not improved with age. Despite an intriguing array of actors, True Crime suffers from odd pacing, distracting tonal shifts and a case of grievous miscasting. Still, Warner Home Video has given the film an excellent Blu-ray presentation. For fans (or Eastwood completists), the disc will not disappoint.
True Crime's cinematographer, Jack N. Green, began as a camera operator for Eastwood,
graduating to DP with Heartbreak Ridge and
continuing through Space Cowboys. Outside
Eastwood's Malpaso Productions, Green's work ranges from sci-fi (Serenity) to comedy (Hot
Tub Time Machine).
For this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, Warner has created a new 2K scan from an interpositive,
and the result is a superbly detailed, film-like image with a natural and finely resolved grain
pattern. Green uses the overcast grayness of the San Francisco Bay Area as both an effective
contrast to the heightened emotions of the characters and as an extension of the bleakly
monochromatic prison environment. Night scenes feature deep blacks, and so do some of the
daytime sequences, given Eastwood's well-known propensity for turning down the lights in his
interior shots. Even in lower light conditions, though, settings like Everett's favorite bar (tended
by the late William Windom), the family home he rarely visits, and the zoo through which he
races his daughter at top speed so that he can rush off to an interview, are rendered with
picturesque detail.
Following the practice established by its corporate affiliate, the Warner Archive Collection,
Warner has encoded True Crime at the healthy average bitrate of 32.95 Mbps.
True Crime's original 5.1 soundtrack has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, and while the mix is relatively contained, it offers a few standout elements. An early sequence involving a traffic incident in a typical Bay Area downpour places rain everywhere, while tires screech in front. The sequences with Beechum are accompanied by distant sounds of the rest of prison life, and the newsroom where Everett works has the familiar sounds of a busy office. For those nostalgic for the era of print media, there's even a short scene with the presses thunderously pumping out the latest edition of the Tribune. The dialogue is clearly rendered throughout, and the score by Eastwood regular Lennie Niehaus (Unforgiven, among many others) deftly mixes jazz with thriller beats.
The extras have been ported over from Warner's DVD release of True Crime, which first
appeared in 1999 and was reissued in 2010. As with many of its recent catalog releases, Warner
has remastered the film's trailer in 1080p.
Between the stoic performance of Isaiah Washington and the antics of assorted supporting
characters (including a former Mrs. Eastwood, Frances Fisher, as a hard-bitten D.A.), True Crime
certainly isn't dull, but it's neither exciting as a thriller nor convincing as a character study. The
end is particularly jarring, as Eastwood fades from a horrifying scene at the execution to an
improbably cheerful Christmas tableau. If only Warner would go back and remaster its earlier
releases of Eastwood's better films at this level of quality!
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Il grande duello / The Big Showdown
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