Ford and Pitt try their best, but Pitt was miscast and both were betrayed by a mediocre script.
We won't even get into the beat-up boat that the Irishmen plan on navigating back to the Emerald Isle. One scene shows what a wreck the thing is, with Pitt's character scraping barnacles so big they could have appeared in a Fifties' sci-fi movie. But we don't get much more in the way of explaining how just a couple of guys could fix a ship that size, much less pilot the thing.
Ford does his best with the material, but frankly it's just not as deep or enriched as the IRA scripts he's been a part of in the past. When the basis for the film is a coincidence the size of the Statue of Liberty, it can't go anywhere but downhill from there. How else to explain a plot that has the most wanted IRA activist taking a basement room in the home of a New York City cop, apparently arranged by an Irish-American judge?
With family in such close proximity, you'd think that there'd be more emotional connection, as there was in "Patriot Games." But the most emotion we get comes through Ford's good-cop moralizing. This guy gets not just indignant but emotional when his partner plugs a fleeing criminal when he didn't have to shoot, and he lets a guy go who steals a condom because the teen (or twenty-something) is too embarrassed to buy it. What a guy.
But that's the kind of obviousness that makes this film only marginally entertaining.
Rumor has it that they started shooting this film without a completed script. It shows.
Video:
Aside from some atmospheric grain in several long shots, the 1080p picture looks pretty decent for a catalog title. The colors are natural, black levels are strong enough to support a lot of detail, and there don't seem to be any compression artifacts. "The Devil's Own" was transferred to a 25-gig single-layered disc using AVC/MPEG-4 technology, and presented in 2.40:1 aspect ratio. The picture quality won't blow you away--there's none of the 3-dimensionality we see in more recent releases, for example--but it won't disappoint you, either.
Audio:
The audio is even stronger. This is one of the better Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtracks I've listened to on an older film. The range of sounds is superb, and there's a nice spread across the speakers. High-dynamic audio scenes like the gunfights have a robust intensity, but this soundtrack also does a nice job of delivering a rich and full-bodied sound during quieter sequences. The TrueHD audio is also available in French and Portuguese, with Spanish only getting a Dolby Digital 5.1 option. Subtitles are in Arabic, French, Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, English, and English SDH.
Extras:
There are no bonus features. But if you're a fan of this film, don't get upset. There weren't any extras on the DVD release either.
Bottom Line:
"The Devil's Own" is a disappointing entry in the IRA thriller sub-genre. Ford and Pitt try their best, but Pitt was miscast and both were betrayed by a mediocre script.
Ford does his best with the material, but frankly it's just not as deep or enriched as the IRA scripts he's been a part of in the past. When the basis for the film is a coincidence the size of the Statue of Liberty, it can't go anywhere but downhill from there. How else to explain a plot that has the most wanted IRA activist taking a basement room in the home of a New York City cop, apparently arranged by an Irish-American judge?
With family in such close proximity, you'd think that there'd be more emotional connection, as there was in "Patriot Games." But the most emotion we get comes through Ford's good-cop moralizing. This guy gets not just indignant but emotional when his partner plugs a fleeing criminal when he didn't have to shoot, and he lets a guy go who steals a condom because the teen (or twenty-something) is too embarrassed to buy it. What a guy.
But that's the kind of obviousness that makes this film only marginally entertaining.
Rumor has it that they started shooting this film without a completed script. It shows.
Video:
Aside from some atmospheric grain in several long shots, the 1080p picture looks pretty decent for a catalog title. The colors are natural, black levels are strong enough to support a lot of detail, and there don't seem to be any compression artifacts. "The Devil's Own" was transferred to a 25-gig single-layered disc using AVC/MPEG-4 technology, and presented in 2.40:1 aspect ratio. The picture quality won't blow you away--there's none of the 3-dimensionality we see in more recent releases, for example--but it won't disappoint you, either.
Audio:
The audio is even stronger. This is one of the better Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtracks I've listened to on an older film. The range of sounds is superb, and there's a nice spread across the speakers. High-dynamic audio scenes like the gunfights have a robust intensity, but this soundtrack also does a nice job of delivering a rich and full-bodied sound during quieter sequences. The TrueHD audio is also available in French and Portuguese, with Spanish only getting a Dolby Digital 5.1 option. Subtitles are in Arabic, French, Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, English, and English SDH.
Extras:
There are no bonus features. But if you're a fan of this film, don't get upset. There weren't any extras on the DVD release either.
Bottom Line:
"The Devil's Own" is a disappointing entry in the IRA thriller sub-genre. Ford and Pitt try their best, but Pitt was miscast and both were betrayed by a mediocre script.
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[release]23233[/release]