This one seems under adapted from the novel.
Yes, things pick up when Jack is sent to Hungary and Budapest falls, and the action picks up again when he's sent to Cuba just before the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, and yes, the saga gets more visually stimulating during moments like that. But such heightened bursts of narrative energy just aren't frequent enough. I suspect that much may have been lost in translation, since Littell's novel ran 892 pages. By the time this is over, I didn't get the sweeping sense of history that I suspect one may have gotten from the book. Though this series begins in 1954 Berlin when the city was still freshly divided and ends with Jack's recommendation that the U.S. support a Boris Yeltsin presidency, "The Company" as a film feels much smaller to me. It's well acted, but I wish it were also well-conceived. Around midpoint things really pick up, but everything seems so hurried compared to the leisurely-paced first third. I´m giving this a 6, based on those portions that are successful.
Video:
"The Company" is mastered in High Definition and presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. Some of the scenes have more grain than others, but for the most part it's a decent picture.
Audio:
The soundtrack is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 that's largely average until you hit scenes where the tanks rumble, and then you realize that it's slightly above-average. There's a nice balance between treble and bass, and good use of the effects speakers at such moments. But because much of the film is stand-and-talk dialogue, you sometimes don't notice. Subtitle options are English (CC) and French.
Extras:
Two special features are included, one a short feature on the novel and how it came to television, and the other a production-style "making of" featurette that gives the usual blend of talking heads and clips. If you have a DVD-ROM drive that's compatible (sorry, Mac owners), you can also access a "Covert Mission" bonus feature. I don't have a PC, so I can't comment.
Bottom Line:
There will be people out there who appreciate this series more than I have, but I suspect they will be the ones who are already familiar with Robert Littell's novel, so that they have knowledge of what's beneath the tip of this iceberg that writer Ken Nolan and director Mikael Salomon have given us.
It may be a simple math problem. Admittedly, the Golden Age of TV mini-series has passed, but it's astounding to consider that Littell's nearly 900-page novel was translated into 4.5 screen hours, while Herman Wouk's sprawling "Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance," which spanned roughly 2000 pages, were given 30 hours on television back in the '80s. That's a huge difference, and it begs two questions: Are today's TV producers thinking that Americans' attention-spans can't tolerate long mini-series anymore? If so, can a successful adaptation be made with such extreme compression? My guess is, probably not. This one seems under adapted from the novel.
Video:
"The Company" is mastered in High Definition and presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. Some of the scenes have more grain than others, but for the most part it's a decent picture.
Audio:
The soundtrack is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 that's largely average until you hit scenes where the tanks rumble, and then you realize that it's slightly above-average. There's a nice balance between treble and bass, and good use of the effects speakers at such moments. But because much of the film is stand-and-talk dialogue, you sometimes don't notice. Subtitle options are English (CC) and French.
Extras:
Two special features are included, one a short feature on the novel and how it came to television, and the other a production-style "making of" featurette that gives the usual blend of talking heads and clips. If you have a DVD-ROM drive that's compatible (sorry, Mac owners), you can also access a "Covert Mission" bonus feature. I don't have a PC, so I can't comment.
Bottom Line:
There will be people out there who appreciate this series more than I have, but I suspect they will be the ones who are already familiar with Robert Littell's novel, so that they have knowledge of what's beneath the tip of this iceberg that writer Ken Nolan and director Mikael Salomon have given us.
It may be a simple math problem. Admittedly, the Golden Age of TV mini-series has passed, but it's astounding to consider that Littell's nearly 900-page novel was translated into 4.5 screen hours, while Herman Wouk's sprawling "Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance," which spanned roughly 2000 pages, were given 30 hours on television back in the '80s. That's a huge difference, and it begs two questions: Are today's TV producers thinking that Americans' attention-spans can't tolerate long mini-series anymore? If so, can a successful adaptation be made with such extreme compression? My guess is, probably not. This one seems under adapted from the novel.
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[release]22391[/release]