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Lexmark3200
This has to be director Tony Scott's best film to date; some will argue that his recent remake of Man on Fire will fit that bill better, and that was a fantastic film for sure, but this Jerry Bruckheimer produced submarine thriller is such a wonderfully crafted motion picture, blending superior acting with edge of your seat tension, it has been played more than any other disc in my collection, and I have definitely gotten my money's worth from the purchase.
I am a sucker for these submarine genre films --- give me U571, The Hunt For Red October and Crimson Tide any day of the week in front of my home theater, and I'm a happy camper. Even the horribly-casted (and acted) K-19: The Widowmaker is beginning to grow on me each time I catch it on cable. But Tony Scott's Crimson Tide is the best of these submarine dramas, hands down, and fans have been clamoring for a long time among the internet home theater community for a better special edition of this DVD, because the one Disney/Buena Vista/Hollywood Pictures has been circulating needs a lot of work; but I'll get to that in a bit.
Teaming up just downright awesome performances by Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, Bruckheimer and Scott have crafted a story of mutiny aboard a United States nuclear submarine. Washington plays the new Executive Officer of Hackman's sub, the USS Alabama, of which he is the Captain, and the crew is called into action after word of a Russian extremist (played by the guy who played Julia Loius-Dreyfuss' boss in Seinfeld) has gone above his government's head and threatened nuclear attack on the U.S. and Japan; the Alabama is ordered to take up a position to fire at and destroy any rogue Russian subs that may be under this guy's control before they can attack the U.S. shores. One of these Russian subs do in fact attack the Alabama, but during the attack, an incoming Emergency Action Message (EAM) from the Pentagon to the Alamaba is interrupted, confusing the crew as to what their next move is. Hackman wants to follow his "orders in hand" which is to launch nuclear weapons back at the Russian subs, but Washington feels the cut-off message may be a message to abort the mission and NOT fire those missiles. If they are wrong, and they fire, they may begin World War III and a nuclear holocaust. And so a mutiny aboard the ship begins, with Hackman trying to have Washington arrested after he refuses to comply to his order to fire the nuclear weapons back at the Russians, but ultimately, Washington has Hackman arrested because they are not allowed to fire weapons unless the Executive Officer and Captain both agree.
With Washington in command, half the crew sides with him while the other half is on the side of their Captain, Hackman; Washington wants to rise the submarine to surface depth in order to get the rest of the cut-off message in order to figure out what is going on before a war starts --- but as he attempts to do this, he is not aware that some of Hackman's devoted men (James Gandolfini, Viggo Mortesen) are planning to get Hackman out of his locked and guarded cabin so they can re-take the ship from Washington and launch those missiles. Eventually, the two men are face to face in "the con" control center of the sub, where Hackman demands Washington give him the missile launch key which he needs to launch the missles, but Washington refuses by putting the key on a rope around his neck so Hackman cant get to it. In the meantime, the radio communications system has been damaged during the Russian sub attack, and without getting that fixed, there will be no way of knowing if the message that was cut off was a message to launch missiles at the Russians or to back off. Hackman threatens Washington and the radio officer trying to fix the damaged communications system by giving them only three minutes and then he is going to take matters into his own hands in order to fire those missiles at the Russians no matter what. The end result, of course, is that the radio is fixed and the incoming message from the Pentagon orders the Alabama to cut off their attack because the Russians have surrendered, proving Washington right. The film ends with Washington and Hackman standing before a judging panel at Naval Headquarters in Pearl Harbor, where Hackman's request for early retirement is granted, and Washington's recommendation for becoming a Captain has been fulfilled, thanks to Hackman. We also get a message, before the end credits start rolling, stating that as of January, 1996, primary authority to fire nuclear weapons from a submarine will no longer rest with a person aboard the sub, but with the president of the United States, to avoid problems like this in the future.
Scott's typical quick-cut editing style, combined with Bruckheimer's famous over-the-top action sequences, makes for an unforgettable picture --- perhaps not as chaotic as Michael Bay's Armageddon, which Bruckheimer also produced, but the slanted camera angles and interior shots of the sub give us a real feeling of claustrophobia and the panic that has gripped the crew of the Alabama during this mutiny. The editing is not as lightning-fast and headache-inducing as Scott's Man on Fire, though. And the acting between Washington and Hackman is absolutely top notch here, with Hackman representing a hard-ass Navy commander who resents Washington's college-oriented views on politics and warfare. The tension between these two builds from the very beginning of the film.
Housed in a simple standard keepcase DVD box, Crimson Tide doesnt offer much in the way of impressive packaging, audio or video performance; and dont let the purple banner across the top of the front cover of the box which reads DIGITALLY MASTERED in the middle fool you --- Disney/Buena Vista, the distributor of Hollywood Pictures and Touchstone Pictures, loves to put this on every one of their non-anamorphic titles but the results sometimes seem far from "Digitally Mastered" as is the case with Crimson Tide........
VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS:
NON-ANAMORPHIC 2:35:1 WIDESCREEN TRANSFER
Disney/Buena Vista has been getting a TON of negative publicity from the home theater community regarding their continuing refusual to release ANAMORPHIC DVDs enhanced for those with widescreen TVs; most of their titles dont have anamorphic enhancement, and this is absolutely unacceptable in this day and age of digital widescreen television. Because Crimson Tide is not anamorphically enhanced, it required me to use my widescreen set's EXPAND mode to fill in the MASSIVE letterboxing that accompanied the image when watching it in STANDARD mode; this was the only way to bring this 2:35:1 transfer to a correct playback on my set, with enlarging the image and reducing the letterboxing areas. From doing this, there were TONS of video flaws that could be seen in this transfer; first of all, characters, when looking closely, exhibit a "shimmering" and weird "pixelation" when there are close-ups of their faces. On top of this, the whole presentation just appears "not clean," and there are some shots that are so riddled with grain and video noise (shots of certain rooms in the submarine) that you can cringe looking at them. But then, at times, the video clears up to a somewhat acceptable level. One such disturbing example of this video problem comes during a scene where the weapons officer (Viggo Mortesen) is waiting for orders to fire the missiles, and the scene is bathed in a red color --- and the background is HORRIBLY grainy and looks like a terrible washed out VHS copy of this film or perhaps even worse. But then as the camera zooms closer to Mortesen's face and away from the background, the grain clears up and the scene becomes clear. Without a doubt, bottom line, Crimson Tide NEEDS a new anamorphic, digitally remastered DVD transfer. It has been promised for some time now, but we still have not seen it.
AUDIO SPECIFICATIONS:
The disc defaults to a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, but is not labeled ANYWHERE on the box as such, and this is typical of all Buena Vista DVDs. There is a French language track available in the menu, as well as Spanish subtitles; this 5.1 mix, while not bad, has been bested by more modern films over the years, and rumor has it that this is simply a carryover of the then-reference Laser Disc release of Crimson Tide. I could not have this confirmed by Buena Vista's press department, but at any rate, the mix is somewhat aggressive, if sounding a bit dated in places. There is good use of LFE, when the sub is diving below the surface of the water, or when missiles explode into other submarines or into underwater canyons, and there is some decent surround usage, such as when missiles are launched and we can hear them zoom over our shoulders into the appropriate surround channels --- but as I said, other, more modern Dolby Digital-encoded discs have bested this title since it's been out, and there is no doubt in my mind that a DTS treatment on a Special Edition for this title could improve the audio. Dont compare this Dolby track to the DTS mix on Universal's U571 because there is no comparison.
For such a great film, this is a HORRIBLE DVD presentation in terms of marketing, as we dont even get a trailer on the disc. If there ever was a DVD that SCREAMED for a Special Edition, it is Tony Scott's Crimson Tide.
I hope you all enjoyed reading the review! I can recommend this disc and adding it to your collections with no reservations at all, if you can live with the technical spec negatives I mentioned.
GMichael
You are like the review master champion. Great stuff. Thanks for the info.
Thanks so much for your kind words Michael; and thanks for taking the time to read the review!
steamboy 2
I do agree about buena vista/disney not remastering there dvd's, they should look paramount as they went back to give red october & other dvd's better picture and sound,special features,and even dts tracks, another tony scott film that needs a real work over is enemy of the state, one of the worst looking dvd's i have seen. the picture is so bad it looks like the shapness has been turned all the way up, as for such a large dvd catalog disney should really take notice & give us what we been asking for for years.
thanks for your reviews i really enjoy reading them!
Thank YOU for taking the time to read the reviews and respond......I really appreciate that. I am going to work on maybe administration for the site getting me my own section devoted to just my DVD reviews so you folks can read and enjoy them in a specific section.
And yes, what the hell is Diseny/Buena Vista/Touchstone/Hollywood or whatever this studio is calling itself these days, thinking with all these non-anamorphic DVDs? Of all their titles --- Gone in 60 Seconds, Con Air, The Rock, Crimson Tide, Armageddon --- Armageddon seems to be the best looking disc of the bunch for being non-anamorphic, because I have all these discs in my collection.
As I say, "Shame On The Mouse"...............