Review of Shining Through

Introduction

Shining Through is a 1992 World War 2 thriller from director David Seltzer, which stars Michael Douglas, Melanie Griffith, Liam Neeson, Joely Richardson and John Gielgud.

The movie tells the story of an American spymaster (Douglas) who recruits his secretary (Griffith) to go behind enemy lines and spy on a high-level Nazi officer (Neeson).

Video

The video is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and is of a good standard throughout the film, with limited evidence of grain, and little or no dirt. The image is sharp and stable at all times.

Visually, this film is excellent, set in the Second World War, the film starts in America and moves to Germany, with excellent locations and a very professional feel. The Nazi parade in Berlin for example is a very large-scale scene, which looks excellent, and likewise the allied bombing raid on Berlin is very well done, although one of the buildings which should be built from stone is clearly wooden when it is blown up!

Audio

The sound comes in Dolby Digital 5.1 and is surprisingly good, with plenty of ambient and atmospheric sound coming from the rear channels. As with the visuals, the soundtrack is of high quality and really adds to the very professional feel of the movie.

The dialogue is always clear and understandable.

Features

Extras consist of a trailer, a featurette and interview clips. The featurette exceptionally uninteresting and mainly contains an extended trailer, interspersed with interview snippets of the cast/crew, often degenerating into a back-slapping exercise. The interview clips are more of the same.

The disc is packaged in a clear Amaray case, the inside of which contains a list of the 15 chapter breaks (too few for a 127 minute movie in my opinion).

Conclusion

A good cast and excellent production cannot save the film from its preposterous plot. I can`t help but wonder what this production team and cast could have done with a good, real-life war story, as it seem to be a shame to waste such talent on something which is so unbelievable from start to finish. Incidentally, this movie picked up the Razzie awards in 1992 for: Worst Actress, Worst Director, Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay. Douglas was nominated for Worst Actor but escaped…

Griffith turns in a good performance and is backed up by solid (if uninspiring) performances from Douglas, Neeson and Richardson. John Gielgud`s small part is, as always, performed wonderfully. The movie itself contains some good action, a number of excellent sets, and the only let-down in the visuals is a fairly poor job of aging Griffith as she looks back on her life throughout the film. Unfortunately however, these qualities cannot drag the movie through its numerous plot holes and highly dubious story.

Video and sound are well presented on the disc, but the extras are disappointing and a proper "making-of" would have been nice to see. I`d suggest finding a rental copy rather than shelling out £15.99 as the movie has little replay value.