Four retired wise-guys, Joey ‘Bats’ Pistella (Burt Reynolds), Bobby Bartellemeo (Richard Dreyfuss), Mike ‘The Brick’ Donatelli (Dan Hedaya) and Tony ‘The Mouth’ Donato (Seymour Cassel) are slowly dying of boredom in a run-down retirement hotel in Miami Beach. Friends since childhood, their mob-dollars have long since dried up and they’re forced to work crumby service jobs to pay the rent.

As the hotel’s other elderly tenants die off, they are quickly being replaced by beautiful, hard-bodied young things wanting sunshine and a beach view and it’s not long before the landlord raises the rent to try and force the remaining geezers out. This is the last straw for our aging mobsters and they hatch a plan to chase the young things away.

The plan is simple. Obtaining a fresh corpse from the city morgue (where ‘The Brick’ works as a makeup artist), our oldfellas stage a gruesome murder in the hotel lobby. The plan is a roaring success and the hotel is quickly deserted, but there’s a catch. The corpse just happens to be the father of the local South-American drug baron (Miguel Sandoval), and soon a hit squad is scouring the city for those responsible. Things are further complicated when the police get involved, and a young female detective (Carrie-Anne Moss) starts sniffing around the hotel.

The idea on which The Crew is based - the adventures of a bunch of retired and impotent mafia hitmen - is a good one. But as is so often the case with Hollywood, there's a problem in the translation from good idea to good screenplay. Riddled with small, inconsequential subplots and humour that lacks any real teeth, the writing too often treads the non-controversial line and feels like a watered-down by-the-numbers sitcom or tele-movie. This seems yet another example of scripting by committee, and it comes as no surprise to find that director Dinner started out in television drama.

That The Crew contains none of the edge or venom that the movie’s premise so obviously offers is a shame, because the cast itself is first rate. With almost as good a line-up as Space Cowboys, The Crew could have been just as popular. Apart from the all-too-few laughs on offer, the cast is given little to do from a script that is too concerned with weak Goodfellas rip-offs than fresh material. About the only stand-out is Carrie-Anne Moss who turns in a nicely understated performance.

Columbia-Tristar have provided us with an anamorphic transfer of The Crew at the original aspect ration of 1.85:1, on a single-sided, single-layer disc. As far as video is concerned, Columbia have done a reasonable job here. The image is sharp and clean (excpet for one or two odd specks), and black level is spot on. The level of detail is great, thanks to the sharpness of the image, but surprisingly, shadow detail is a little on the low side. There are no compression artefacts at all (great job Columbia), although the sharpness does create the odd instance of aliasing. Colours vary considerably during the film, switching often between bright and gaudy Miami exteriors and the dingy retirement hotel. In all cases, colour rendition is good, and in the case of the brighter scenes, colours are vivid and full.

Four Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks are provided - English, French, Spanish and Italian. At all times the dialogue is clear and distinct, despite the odd mumble, and audio sync is not an issue. In general, the soundtrack itself is unremarkable, sporting standard sound and foley effects, and except for one or two scenes, utilising only a minimal amount of ambient sound. The subwoofer has little to do.

The menus are anamorphic, static and silent. In terms of extras, the single layer doesn't leave much room to move, and the result is another disappointing collection from Columbia. We are provided with ‘selected’ (ie. incomplete) filmographies for Richard Dreyfuss, Burt Reynolds, Carrie-Anne Moss and Jennifer Tilly. In addition we get a full frame Theatrical Trailer for The Crew, trailers for Joe Dirt and As Good as it Gets which are widescreen non-anamorphic, and the trailer for Men in Black which is anamorphic widescreen at 1.85:1. It is sad to see that what room was left for extras has been filled up with what is essentially marketing material for the distributers, and this seems to be becoming a sad trend in DVD releases of late. Given the cast, I would have loved to see some of the outtakes or, well, anything.