Lionsgate/Paramount Blu-ray Wave One: Drop Zone/Hard Rain/The Running Man)
Picture: B-/B-/C+ Sound: B/B/B- Extras: D/D/C Films: D/D/C
NOTE: The Phantom is also part of this wave,
but it will be reviewed separately, while Running
Man is not from Paramount
but included by Lionsgate as part of the wave.
In a
first, Paramount
has licensed some of their action-genre films to another company for release
and on Blu-ray. Of course, they already
have licensed them the entire Republic Pictures holdings which they release
titles from here and there, but Paramount
apparently wants to focus on older classics and their newest releases. Fortunately, the quality is not bad.
John
Badham is a competent director, but has been in a dry spell and his 1994 action
film Drop Zone with Wesley Snipes is
one of his weakest thrillers. Snipes is
a U.S. marshal who looses a computer expert prisoner on an airplane trip and
has to get help from the villainous Gary Busey which requires him to go
skydiving (among other things) to recapture his original prisoner. Unfortunately, it is highly predictable,
formulaic and the script (with at least three writers) never works. Busey was about to take a permanent career
freefall, but Snipes was still in good shape and on his way up, despite this
misstep.
Mikael
Solomon’s Hard Rain (1998) is also
as preposterous as Morgan Freeman takes a villainous turn as a thief determined
to rob an armored vehicle driven by security man Christian Slater. Graham Yost’s screenplay tries to come up
with slick ideas set against an unusual backdrop of rain never-ending. That gets thin quickly, though the
predictability gets to the breaking point first. Randy Quaid, Minnie Driver, Richard Dysart
and Betty White also star.
Then there is Paul Michael Glazer’s The
Running Man, another Science Fiction “death sport” film with a younger
Arnold Schwarzenegger as the unwilling participant of a televised hit game show
where he could get killed. Richard
Dawson (Family Feud, Match Game) steals many scenes as the
evil game show host and the film has recently been among those imitated in a
new wave of such films. It has some good
moments, but was never one of the best films of anyone involved, even with
Yaphet Kotto there. Still, it has its
cult following, was a hit in its time and films like Gamer and the Death Race
remake have given it new curiosity interest.
The 1080p
digital High Definition image on all three has softness problems, but the 1.85
X 1 image on Running Man is the
poorest with too much softness, a print that needs work, special effects that
would look better in a cleaner print and is also likely an old HD master. The others have some softness, but look
better overall look at 2.35 X 1. You get
some noise, but both have some good shots, especially Zone shot in real anamorphic Panavision. Rain
is in lesser Super 35mm film and is shows, but the masters and prints are not
in bad shape at all.
All have
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 7.1 soundtracks, save the 5.1 on Zone.
Running Man is the weakest,
has the oldest audio and stretching it to 7.1 was a mistake. Zone
is just fine as a 5.1 mix, but I was surprised how good Rain sounded in 7.1, though it too would have been better in 5.1
and in all cases. The scores all
benefit, though none of the music (by Hans Zimmer, Christopher Young and Harold
Faltermeyer respectively) is so-so throughout.
As for
extras, all only have original theatrical trailers, save Running Man, which
also has two making-of featurettes (Game Theory and Lockdown On Main Street)
and two audio commentary tracks (Glazer and Producer Tim Zinnemann, plus
Executive Producer Rob Cohen) from the previous special edition DVDs.
- Nicholas Sheffo
