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  • Widescreen 1.85:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
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  • English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  • French: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  • German: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
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    Thought Crimes (Rental)
    Universal/Universal . R4 . COLOR . 86 mins . M15+ . PAL

      Feature
    Contract

    Made for American cable television in 2003, Thought Crimes is an unusual film in that it makes use of something earmarked as the paranormal slash X-Files and doesn’t make it a darkly Gothic piece or a weirdo cult film.

    Freya McAllister (Navi Rawat) is a regular kid attending her prom night when she suddenly and without warning starts hearing the thoughts of everyone in her vicinity. Deciding she’s gone crazy, she is locked up for nine years until intelligence agencies realise she is a telepath and she is trained in how to block the thoughts and how to focus on an individual.

    Soon she is caught up in the National Security Administration as an ‘observer’, but in actuality is reading the minds of criminals to help prevent a political assassination. However, with her sister being a lawyer and assigned to the crook’s case, there are soon all sorts of entanglements – particularly as her sister doesn’t know of her gift and still suspects she is mentally unstable.

    I must say I didn’t expect much here and was rewarded with much more. The quality of the writing is quite nice, dealing with the paranormal issue without sensationalism. If we ignore the fact that Freya is a deliberately hot young scrawny thing working amongst a raft of besuited men, the storyline is otherwise a good one. Obviously written with the intent to make a series, the show introduces characters who all come together to create a working unit in which all have a specialised application. Freya’s partner Brendan Dean, for example, has a photographic recall; so if he recalls a setting, she can analyse the memory by reading his mind. It’s a fairly original premise for a drama series, though the overall darkness of the theme tended to keep much comedy out of the picture - although there were literally hundreds of opportunities with so much mind-reading going on.

    This one is well worth checking out, as an interesting and well told excursion into the nether regions of the mind that also works well as a regular cop-pursuit-of-the-baddie film.

      Video
      Audio
      Extras
    Contract

    Visually, the picture quality is stunning. Produced just last year, the film is spotless with nothing by way of transfer troubles or film artefacts. Delivered in the widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and anamorphically enhanced, the vision is razor sharp and super crisp. With such a dark theme, there are sporadic moments of shadowing with all details easily seen and blacks being true. There are also some very nicely framed shots here and the overall brooding feeling is delivered by overcast skies and a downplayed colour palette in the costuming. I have to give this part a ten, no question. It looks superb.

    Audio quality is also magnificent with the sound package being delivered in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. The surrounds are in constant use, with us experiencing the voices in Freya’s head at all opportunities. These are in constant motion around the stage and are presented just clearly enough we can make out individual words, but not so we can hear full sentences, which is just the way it is intended for the plot.

    The musical score by Brian Taylor is also brilliantly devised to fill in the blanks without dominating the action. Quite the contrary actually, in that the music brings the perfect moody and melodic overtones with an understated choral base that does contribute a little, I suppose, to that Danny Elfman kind of theme. The score is reminiscent of films like The Gift and Edward Scissorhands in that sort of awestruck choral manner meeting classical orchestral. Very cool and perfectly apt here.

    Unfortunately there's not a lick by way of extras. Anything woulda been better than nothing, but the film is most definitely strong enough to stand alone at least as a rental.

    I was pretty impressed with this film actually, and quite surprised to be so. The whole thing sounded like a tacky sort of cable-produced movie, but I am gladly wrong to have misjudged it. The dissection of Freya’s gift is handled well, showing her as a fragile young woman rather than a gung-ho let’s shoot ‘em all type, and this builds a nice complexity of character that the show is obviously in no hurry to relate all at once. Well above-average stuff for a cable movie and well worth checking out.


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  •   And I quote...
    "Thankfully no dialogue crimes here in this fairly well adjusted cable film about an unusual (and mandatorily hot) girl."
    - Jules Faber
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Teac DVD-990
    • TV:
          AKAI CT-T29S32S 68cm
    • Speakers:
          Teac PLS-60 Home Theatre System
    • Centre Speaker:
          Teac PLS-60 Home Theatre System
    • Surrounds:
          Teac PLS-60 Home Theatre System
    • Subwoofer:
          Akai
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard RCA
    • Video Cables:
          Standard Component RCA
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