Luke Perry stars as Mike, who has his father, a former military geneticist, come and live with him after faking his death. Yet when an assistant is killed, Mike starts asking questions about his father’s “former” life. Penny, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, is assigned to protect Mike during the investigation surrounding the death of the assistant. But it soon becomes clear that British officer Robert Ogilve (007’s Roger Moore) is in charge of the investigation and Mike learns about his father's previous life as well as also Ogilve’s intentions.
B-wah ha ha ha... The usual story of good vs. evil, and the evil one appears good – surprised? Thought not. This shows the depth and predictability of the film, which suffers from a ludicrous script and terrible dialogue... it’s like Days Of Our Lives took a turn for the worse, and nothing can be that bad... wait I take that back, it can.
The video is presented in a widescreen aspect of 1.78:1, and is 16x9 enhanced.
The image is remarkably clean with a soft appearance that causes it to lack definition at times, although it doesn’t become annoying. Occasionally some film artefacts can be seen whizzing past, but nothing terribly large nor noticeable and most are of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it type.
The colour palette used is dim and dark, yet it still conveys the Canadian beauty on screen. Blacks are generally black with no sign of low-level noise. Shadow detail is crisp and clean throughout and shows great definition.
The biggest flaw of the transfer (apart from the film) is aliasing, and even that is minimal. Occasionally on the usual culprits the jagged lines can be seen, but this is not disturbing to the relaxed viewer.
Being a single-sided, single-layered disc there is no layer change to contend with. There are no subtitles either.
Two English audio tracks exist on the transfer – a Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0.
Both tracks offer a faithful representation of the on-screen action and dialogue is crisp, clear and audible throughout the film on both tracks. Accents are clean and easy to understand.
In the 5.1 track, the surrounds get a heavy workout with effects, as does the subwoofer – why else do they put explosions in films? The soundstage is enveloping and rich, with dialogue contained within the centre channel.
In the 2.0 track, the front speakers get a fairly heavy workout too, but it just lacks the enveloping quality of a 5.1 surround track.
At one point, audio synch is a slight problem, but it is due to some truly dodgy ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording). Other examples of this can be seen in Legally Blonde where Emmett is dropping Elle off after visiting the spa, or in The Beach when Sal comes up to Richard and says “come with me” while her lips say something completely different.
As per usual with rental discs, and we're starting to sound like a broken record, there is nothing ‘extra’ or ‘special’ about the inclusions on this disc. We have a stock standard menu which is 16x9 enhanced and not animated. Accompanying this is a theatrical trailer which is full frame with Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround-Encoded English.
There is a reason why these direct-to-video films never actually make it to the cinema, and that is because they stink. OK, that may sound harsh but really, in comparison to other films of the same genre, it's all been there, done that and let's face it, it's boring now. Again, the question remains, why do these sorts of films get good transfers while some of the more popular or artistic films miss out? The video transfer is neat, and the audio transfer is suitable with nothing at all amusing in the extra features department. If you're wondering what to hire and this comes up, take it only if there is nothing left. I mean, it’s Luke Perry... urrrgghh!
