Review of Who Dares Wins

Introduction

“Who Dares Wins”, no I’m not talking about Del Boy Trotter’s catch phrase but that of the SAS, possibly the most feared and highly respected group of soldiers in the world today. During the early Eighties the country’s interest in the SAS was at a peek after they successfully stormed the Iranian Embassy in London (forgive me if I am a little factually incorrect, I’m old and feeble :P).

So riding on this interest a film was made about the SAS, mirroring closely the afore mentioned Embassy storming. Led by Lewis Collins as SAS Harman Captain Peter Skellen (fresh from success in the TV series “The Professionals”) this film enjoyed allot of success at the time but some 19 years later how has it been treated on DVD?

Video

Oh my dear god no! A glorious 4:3 full frame, non anamorphic, transfer! I initially got into DVD to see films as they were intended and this means in their correct aspect ratios. However this disc sporting a 4:3 transfer might well mean that this was the original aspect ratio of the movie as the main titles are well framed within the screen and lack any off the tell-tale signs of falling off of the sides of the screen.

Overall the picture quality isn’t too bad but we have come to expect allot better. There are some scenes that suffer from marks on the print and also some issues with the colours looking a touch washed out in places but all things considered, mainly the age, it’s not too bad however we consumers demand more nowadays I’m afraid.

Audio

A word of warning first . . . when I got to the menu screen I was greeted with a series of static crackling noises that cleared after a few seconds. It’s of a sufficient frequency that could do serious damage to your loudspeakers if you have them turned up so if you load this disc turn the sound down to start with just in case. I haven’t heard of anyone else with this problem, I’ve watched well in excess of 300 DVDs on my player (a Pioneer DV606) and this is the first one I’ve ever had a problem with.

The soundtrack is presented in stereo, yes that’s a full two channels! Forgive my sarcasm but a stereo soundtrack doesn’t cut it in any movie, especially when it sounds as weak as this one. Often sounding muffled this is a poor effort on what is so often an extremely exciting format.

Features

Features??? Well a few photos and some pages of text about the history of the SAS is all we have here. Pretty pathetic and indicative of the lack of attention shown to this disc overall.

Conclusion

Age can be most unkind at times and this movie has suffered horribly. I could say it’s simply because we expect more from an action movie nowadays but that would be wrong. Looking at the story it’s amazingly weak. Lewis Collins, known to be ex-SAS, is let in to a secret terrorist organisation? What are they campaigning against . . . common sense?

Also I’ve seen some wooden acting before but some of the performances here make the Tellytubbies eligible for Oscars. Lewis Collins isn’t free from this slur either and seems to think he can carry off the role as long as he keeps his teeth firmly clenched in a menacing fashion.

The action scenes are pretty well done however and I did find myself wanting to see how it all ended so it’s not all bad.

Overall this has aged badly and the DVD quality, in particular the sound, is not great. Only recommend this DVD to anyone with a fetish for the SAS.