Review of Out Of Sight

Introduction

Another Elmore Leonard story (Jackie Brown, Get Shorty) gets turned into a film. Despite essentially being a cops and robbers story, it has a lot more than that to offer, and is very original. An action film with some comedy, 2 cameos from Jackie Brown characters (try and spot them) and an acting performance from a pop star.

You`ll need to pay attention to keep up with the action as it`s fast-paced, but with some interesting "freeze frame" effects too.

Video

The picture is good, (1.85:1) but is not anamorphic, which is a great shame. The image quality is still very good, but an anamorphic transfer would have made things even better. Such a thing does exist too, so it`s a little unfortunate that we have to miss out.

Audio

The sound is great, a very good David Holmes soundtrack (which is also sort of "showcased" in the extras), a couple of songs thrown in here and there, and there are also plenty of gunshots zinging around the soundstage in some of the action scenes.

However, a DTS mix exists in region one and I can`t help thinking that it would have added even more to what is already a good audio track.

Features

Plenty of extras to keep you amused. First the deleted scenes - I felt that a reasonable proportion of them could have been left in the film as they explain a quite a few things !

There is also a very good behind the scenes documentary, a good commentary by director and screenwriter and some other bits and pieces. Lots of interesting snippets of info for you to pick up.

I mentioned that the David Holmes soundtrack is "showcased" - this is essentialy a chapter selection screen which jumps to chapters where the music features heavily - a different feature and quite a good one although an isolated score would have been really good.

Conclusion

All in all, a very good film and a reasonably good DVD - definitely worth seeing. I think that 52 chapter stops is a bit over the top for a 2 hour film though! The menu system takes some getting used to as well.

If you`re looking to buy this film and have region one capability, I suggest that you look there first as you get an anamorphic transfer, and there is a separate DTS version available too.