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  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Widescreen 2.35:1
  • Dual Layer (RSDL )
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital Surround
  • French: Dolby Digital Surround
  • Spanish: Dolby Digital Surround
  • German: Dolby Digital Surround
  • Italian: Dolby Digital Surround
  Subtitles
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  Extras

    Legal Eagles

    Universal/Sony Pictures Home Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 111 mins . PG . PAL

      Feature
    Contract

    Robert Redford plays Assistant District Attorney Tom Logan who is head of a legal case prosecuting Chelsea Deardon (Darryl Hannah) for stealing a painting from a local Manhattan art dealer. Debra Winger plays Laura Kelly the defence lawyer hired by Deardon to prove her innocence by claiming the property is rightfully hers. Deardon explains to Kelly how on the night of her 8th Birthday there was a terrible fire and her father, a famous artist, was burnt up along with his precious and valuable paintings. Now 20 years later Deardon claims some of the paintings survived the fire, which was set for insurance fraud. After hearing this story Kelly believes that charismatic Assistant DA Tom Logan will not prosecute her client if he hears the truth. Therefore Kelly goes about trying to prove Deardon’s story to Logan. However, the next day the art dealer turns up dead and Deardon is the prime suspect and ironically found sleeping with the Assistant DA. The now disgraced Logan decides to help Deardon and joins forces with Kelly to prove her innocence and get back what is rightfully hers. One thing is for sure – this duo of legal eagles are in for one hard battle.

    Robert Redford is okay as the steadfast attorney who finds his job and life whisked out from under him. Redford and Winger have quite a good chemistry, which really does boost the overly unoriginal storyline. Overall the movie is quite long and rambling and has many inconsistencies, but if you want a few laughs and a bit of a smile it’s a good watch.

      Video
    Contract

    Unfortunately the video quality of this transfer falls well short of what we should expect, even for a movie of its age. MPEG artefacts aren’t apparent, and grain is only minor in a few scenes... This is about as good as it gets for this disc.

    Aliasing is the big killer for this transfer, being present in almost every scene of the film. The film is presented with a ratio of 2.35:1 and is NOT 16:9 enhanced. Shadow detail is terrible, especially considering there are several large night scenes. The image is reasonably sharp and clear, but still nothing special, lacking a lot of depth in several scenes. The movie as a whole is pretty drab, lacking any real colour and brightness. The three-colours-brown of Redford’s wardrobe doesn’t really add to the beauty of this disc, but overall the colours come out looking realistic and life-like, even if they are quite dull.

    The layer change is around the 58 minute mark, and is very noticeable.

    Overall this transfer was disappointing, aliasing appears right through the film and is blatantly obvious and annoying, even to the most ignorant viewers.

      Audio
    Contract

    The audio on this disc is also a pretty average transfer, although not as flawed as the video. The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 and does not suffer from audio sync problems. The dialogue is clear throughout most of the film and there is no low-level noise.

    The backing score by Elmer Bernstein compliments the movie well and tries to raise the pace of a movie that does tend to drag on at times.

    There is obviously no surround or subwoofer channel support for this disc, although this soundtrack was definitely not worth remixing into a 5.1 channel standard. There is not too much to say about the audio on this disc, Legal Eagles is a dialogue dependant film, and the dialogue comes through reasonably well without any major flaws.

      Extras
    Contract

    There are NO extra features, making this disc sound even less attractive.

      Overall  
    Contract

    Overall, this is a pretty average disc, especially considering the terrible video transfer and the lack of ANY extra features. Legal Eagles isn’t too bad a movie itself, Redford is at his charismatic best, but is about the only thing that holds this struggling film together. If you're trying to build up the newly released Robert Redford collection of DVD’s then this disc might not be too bad an addition, however unless you’re a big fan then this one might be something that should be avoided, even though it did contain a few good laughs.


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      And I quote...
    "Legal Eagles is an almost decent movie that unfortunately has been given a very disappointing transfer."
    - Nathan Clark
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Pioneer DV-636
    • TV:
          LG 80cm
    • Speakers:
          Home Built
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard RCA
    • Video Cables:
          standard s-video
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