Flatliners
(Blu-ray)
Picture:
B+ Sound: B Extras: C- Film: C-
“I can die for three seconds.”
“I can die for four seconds.”
“I can die for five seconds!”
“I can die for SEVEN seconds!!!”
No, it’s
not the new Goth version of the TV game show classic Name That Tune, it’s Joel Schumacher’s wacky, would-be thriller Flatliners, a title that may refer to
the people who made it. In this inane
1990 hoot fest, Julia Roberts (who goes from Pretty Woman to “death-worship woman”), Kevin Bacon, William
Baldwin and Kiefer Sutherland play medical student who decide they can
experiment with the line between clinically dead and actual death inside a
classy institution. Now, that
institution has been disgraced!
The film
can never decide if it is Horror, Supernatural Horror or even Science Fiction,
given away by a very sloppy reference visually to a scene with Sutherland that
is meant to resemble Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t
Look Now, a hit for his father Donald back in the 1973. That’s how desperate this gets. The stars are not bad, but this is the kind
of bad commercial film Schumacher is far above at this point. However, it is a curio and some will want to
waste their time watching it. Just try
not to laugh too hard.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image was shot in real anamorphic Panavision
by Jan de Bont and is about on par with the recent Blu-ray of another film he
shot the same way, Basic Instinct. This is not as good looking a film, but he
tries to make it interesting. Too bad
the Peter Filardi screenplay defeats him.
The sound
was originally issued in a 4.1 mix for 70mm blow-ups in the U.S. and seems to
have had digital 35mm prints in Europe in the CDS (Cinema Digital Sound)
format, which was the forerunner of all the digital sound formats now. Sound design is not bad for its age,
including on James Newton Howard’s score, but the mix was always either quiet
or too self-impressed and you can hear that in the Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes
(English, French) and the better PCM 16/48 5.1 mix here. It will be a curio for audiophile fans, but
for an old CDS film on Blu-ray, we recommend Terminator 2 instead. There
are no extras, but Schumacher has created some great audio commentary tracks
and one here would have made this more worthwhile.
See our reviews
for the other Blu-rays form this review as follows:
Basic Instinct
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5487/Basic+Instinct+–+Unrated+Director
Terminator 2
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3976/Terminator+2:+Judgment+Day+(Blu
- Nicholas Sheffo
