Silent Tongue (Pan & Scan/Full Screen)
Picture: C-
Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: C-
Sam Shepherd is a very smart man and a good writer, but in
1994, he may have hit his nadir with the Western Silent Tongue. This came out a year after star River
Phoenix’s death and is he is not in the film enough to begin with. Alan Bates, Richard Harris, and Dermot
Mulroney cannot save the film from repeating the same old tired territory about
race, genocide and morality. It is not
that the film is politically incorrect, but that it is tired and bored. I never bought any of the Native American
characters either.
The 1.33 X 1 image is a cut and butchered down version of
the original 2.35 X 1 Panavision shooting and it looks awful. It looks soft, has color and detail issues,
and even sometimes leaves squeezed scope images in the print! Worst of all, the end credits are
letterboxed properly. The Dolby Digital
2.0 Stereo has little in the way of surround information. Though the film is listed in the end credits
as a Dolby A-type analog theatrical release, some records show it was actually
Dolby SR analog. Either way, it does
not sound it and was likely butchered down for the panning and scanning. The sound is a generations down, though
Patrick O’Hearn’s score is flat. There
are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
