Speed

Fox has come back to the dvd market with a vengance. Their latest product has all the basics right. Anamorphic transfers, blockbuster movies, full color picture discs and my favorite dvd cases thus far. This latest offering is of the long awaited Speed. Having seen this on analog laserdisc it was a welcome change to get hold of it in a much improved format and to see if this is the best version currently available in the world. Check it out...

Officers Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) and Harry Temple (Jeff Daniels) are on a routine rescue mission. A high rise office building has one of its lifts C4 rigged by a bomber with a full load of people on board. He's asking for $3 million dollars or else the victims plummit to their death. Jack and Harry do some fancy rescue work, save the people and are now hot on the tail of the madman, Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper). Howard gets away by faking his own death in a bomb blast.

Sometime later, Howard gets Jacks attention again in a BIG way and sets him a new task. "There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus hits 50, the bomb is armed. If the bus drops below 50, the bomb goes off. No passengers are allowed off or the bus blows. You can't radio the bus because the radio is dead. What do you do?".

To make things even more interesting, the bus driver has been shot and University student, Annie Porter (Sandra Bullock) has taken control of the wheel in a hope to keep the bus above 50, dodging traffic, sharp corners and missing sections of road.

It seems Howard Payne has found the perfect way to get his 3 million dollars. What he didn't count on was to be outsmarted by someone who can't act. :)

As a dvd, it's stands out from the crowd as having one of the better transfers available today. As a medium in general, it is a huge improvement over the laserdisc and inferior VHS transfers of the past. The opening title sequence just looked so much more detailed than I ever remembered and what struck me was the definition which led me to this conclusion.

The benefit of an anamorphic PAL transfer is clearly evident here. Sharpness and image detail are of a very high quality, black level and shadow detail are also of a very high quality and I could not faulter these areas at all.

One detriment to the transfer was the appearance of aliasing in the image. It becomes evident in some prone scenes and could be attributed to the increased sharpness and detail. The image doesn't suffer any digital edge-enhancement so the pristine sharpness just pushes the limit of how scenes handle the aliasing. (If you're wondering what aliasing is, a good example is the credits on the back of the disc case itself for this movie. Check them out and you'll see how straight lines suffer a sort of ripple effect)

This is a dual layered disc and the layer change is non-obtrusive, occuring on a static scene to begin with but I did notice that the pause caused the image to shimmer a little as it paused 1 field and not both. Minor quibble.

An excellent soundtrack right from the beginning. The opening credits are probably the most striking for both audio and video. Here we are treated to ambience in the elevator shaft which occurs all around your sound stage. Some of the effects from there on are exaggerated a little but not over the top, complimenting the imagery perfectly.

Directionality is good and localisation of particular ambient effects is easily depicted. The musical score provided by Mark Mancina is suited perfectly to the mood of the movie and certainly improves many scenes greatly.

There's only one problem with the soundtrack though - the .1 track is missing. I was hoping that it may have been included within the mains but alas it is totally missing. What this means is that where you would expect some low end punch, you don't get any. This is a real shame given the content of the film and it would have improved the soundtrack that 2 points more.

A theatrical trailer is a standard extra and please Fox, don't specify interactive menus, scene access and multiple language subtitles as "special features". They are "standard features" as without interactive menus you wouldn't get to the movie or the trailer in the first place. Find me a dvd that DOESN'T have interactive menus and if you do, determine it as a percentage of the whole market. Yes, you would pass breathaliser test on that percentage.

This is a very enjoyable action movie and probably on the first that I saw with a pace that wasn't present in previous movies. The movie is based on a speeding bus and there's never going to be a moment where you can stop to smell the roses.

Pick this one up and add it to your action collection. A .1 channel would have made it demo material, but the region 1 version suffers the same affliction. Anamorphic wins here. Go region 4.