Movie:
Sweet November, originally released earlier this year, was based on the little known 1968 film of the same name. Directed by Pat O’Conner, the film stars Keanu Reeves (Nelson) and Charlize Theron (Sara), with Jason Isaacs (Chaz), Greg Germann (Vince), and Liam Aiken (Abner). O’Conner previously directed Inventing the Abbotts, Circle of Friends, and others, while Reeves and Theron previously starred in 1997’s Devil’s Advocate together as husband and wife.

Sara Deever is an eccentric, charming woman who, every month, chooses one man to help for one month’s time. When she meets Nelson Moss, a workaholic advertising executive, she knows that she’s found her November. After some convincing and losing his job, Nelson reluctantly agrees to let her try and help him. During the course of the month, Nelson and Sara begin to fall in love - but will her secrets interfere with the love blossoming between them?

I missed Sweet November in the theater, but I was looking forward to seeing the film on DVD. I must say that I really enjoyed the film, though it is sad, and look forward to revisiting it again in the future. Reeves and Theron both give great performances, and the supporting actors, Isaacs in particular, do a great job as well. At times, the movie does feel slightly long, in part due to several sub-stories that exist within the main framework of the film. However, I’m glad that none of these stories were cut, as the film on the whole is excellent.

Picture:
Sweet November is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. The transfer is crisp and sharp throughout, with no print defects that I detected. Colors in the film are well saturated throughout: most of the film features vibrant colors, but in some parts of the movie, the colors are intentionally muted slightly and tinted. Flesh tones are natural throughout and blacks are deep and rich.

Sound:
Sweet November is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 in both English and French. I was impressed by the 5.1 track, as I really didn’t expect the film to utilize the surrounds as much as it did. From the very beginning of the film, the surrounds are used effectively and quite often for directionality, ambient noises, and the film’s terrific score. Dialogue throughout the film is crisp and clean, with no distortion that I could detect. Optional subtitles are available in English and French.

Extras:
The main extra is the nine and a half minute long featurette titled, “Sweet November: From the Heart.” Its mainly promotional, though to be honest, it gives away quite a lot of the movie, and I would recommend watching it only after you’ve seen the film. It features quite a lot of clips from the film, as well as interview clips with Reeves, Theron, Isaacs, O’Conner, and Deborah Aal, one of the film’s producers. While mainly focused on discussing the storyline, it does give a bit of insight as to why some of the actors were cast in the film. Other extras include the film’s theatrical trailer and select filmographies for Reeves, Theron, and O’Conner.

Summary:
Sweet November is a great romantic drama that will appeal to fans of the genre or the lead actors. Warner’s DVD provides the film a great presentation that will certainly please fans of the film. Highly Recommended!

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The Usual Suspects is one of those rare thrillers where the more you think you know, the less you truly do.  Essentially, it’s all a big mind game movie, seemingly placing all of its emphasis on an intricate plot to reel you in, when all the while, it aims to pull the rug right out from under you.  How much you enjoy the film as a whole will most likely depend on how much you think the nifty end of the film makes the previous 90+ minutes of convoluted plot retrospectively fascinating. A few will suggest it negates the entire set-up’s existence, although many more will rank it as one of the best told mysteries in film history. 

I fall somewhere right in between on this one.  I do think it entertaining, particularly in the second half, once the Keyser Soze storyline emerges, but I can’t really say that I think it a great movie as a whole, despite finishing strong.  The first hour of the film isn’t particularly gripping, with a great deal of name-dropping of characters that can be hard to follow for those not paying attention.  Of course, those who know what eventually happens will know that following all of these characters and names doesn’t really matter, although many will end up watching it more than once to scour for little tells and pieces of the puzzle that suggests something more to the story than what appears on the surface.  Perhaps there is, here and there, but I’m not close to being convinced yet that The Usual Suspects is some sort of modern noir masterpiece, as its rabid fans contest.

The film starts somewhere in the middle, with a harbored cargo ship being set ablaze by a mysterious presence who has apparently killed just about everyone on board.  The cops suspect a drug deal gone bad, as the millions of dollars worth of coke said to be on board is missing, and no traces of who committed the heinous deed and why.  The sole key witness to the events is "Verbal’ Kint (Spacey, Consenting Adults), a mousy Cerebral Palsy victim who claims not to be a rat, but can’t resist spilling all the details, especially since he’s been granted immunity. It seems that he and four other notorious criminals banded together to pull off a major job, succeed, then get embroiled into another while out in California.  It is there that they become ensnared in a "bigger fish" scenario whereby they must follow through on plans as dictated by the unseen criminal mastermind Keyser Soze, rumored to be the most vicious and powerful kingpin in the world.

The aspect that keeps many viewers coming back for endless repeats is the fact that the screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie (The Way of the Gun, Public Access) blends fact and fiction in such a way that it becomes entertaining just trying to discern which pieces of the puzzle are fact and which are fiction.  This is also one of the more maddening things about the film as well, as the fact that we aren’t ever sure if there is enough evidence either way to make any firm conclusions, although we might always think we’re on the verge of figuring it all out.  It would be easy to dismiss everything one sees as a complete fabrication, and yet, we never feel comfortable in doing so; the plot is intricate enough to think that there is something of substance there.  And yet, we can’t quite believe anything with absolute certainty either.  Yes, it is truly maddening and absorbing at the same time.

While the plot itself might be called tightly wound, the attitude of the cast is quite loose, so even if the actual story proves difficult to always follow, the interplay among the characters is entertaining enough to keep the plot explanations from becoming a sure slog-fest.  The casting is curious, benefiting from proven performers like Spacey (in an Oscar-winning performance), Byrne (Little Women, Dead Man) and Palminteri (Bullets Over Broadway, A Bronx Tale) to add credibility in the key roles, while the supporting cast consists of actors primarily playing for laughs or macho posturing, such as Del Toro’s (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Traffic) unintelligible delivery, Pollak’s (Clean Slate, A Few Good Men) attempt at playing a bad-ass, and Baldwin’s (Slap Shot 2, Shelter Island) incessant quipping.  The technical specs are top notch, with a rich score by John Ottman (The Cable Guy, Lake Placid) complementing the moodiness of Newton Thomas Sigel’s (Blankman, Fallen) cinematography perfectly.

Of course, by the end of the film, you realize all of these things are the result of one big shell game dealt by the hands of people good at what they do, and despite the spottiness of the first half and some of the more artificial elements, The Usual Suspects succeeds at what it sets out to do — fool everyone.  While I may hedge quite a bit in my final proclamation as the the film’s greatness, I can’t deny admiring the audaciousness of the presentation, even if I come away detached to the film on any emotional level.  People will watch this endlessly, trying to connect all of the dots, but I suspect the greatest trick McQuarrie and Singer (X-Men, X2) ever pulled was in convincing the cinematic world that enough dots exist to make a complete picture.

Qwipster’s rating:
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"Surprisingly dark and effective Disney version." (Worth A Look)

Time to eat some crow: Months in advance, without having seen it, I had been most unkind to ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame.’ I wasn’t alone in my cynicism. Disney doing Hugo? Anybody remember ‘The Tall Guy,’ where struggling actor Jeff Goldblum played the lead in a ludicrous Andrew Lloyd Webber-esque musical based on ‘The Elephant Man’? A Disney ‘Hunchback’ promised to be even worse.So now I feel like a jerk, guilty of doing to Hunchback what everyone does to Quasimodo in the movie — ridiculing it out of ignorance. Yes, Disney is still too loud and show-bizzy. And yes, Hunchback can’t go more than a reel without boisterous comic relief (here it’s a trio of gargoyles, voiced by Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander, Murphy Brown’s Charles Kimbrough, and the late Mary Wickes). And yes, the villain — despite his seething lust for the heroine — is firmly in Disney’s questionable diabolical-queer tradition in terms of his features and velvety sneers. But still! After a serious misstep with the PC lecture Pocahontas, Disney has rediscovered the dark magic of the psyche. Hunchback, like The Lion King, resonates deeply for adults as well as for kids. There are moments of shocking darkness and obsession, which means that parents should prepare for long talks with younger children after the movie. Hunchback isn’t "too scary for kids," as has been claimed, but it is provocative. The basic story — the very basic story — remains the same. Quasimodo (voice by Tom Hulce), a deformed bell-ringer raised by the evil Judge Frollo (Tony Jay), falls in love with the fiery gypsy Esmeralda (Demi Moore). She befriends him but falls in love with the kindly, heroic soldier Phoebus (Kevin Kline). Frollo, in turn, becomes obsessed with Esmeralda; his lust for her mutates into self-denying fury. The gifted directors, Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, also did Beauty and the Beast, another fable of tolerance. They do for Tom Hulce what they did for Robby Benson: give weight to an actor known for callow roles. They get vivid performances from Demi Moore, who is sexier here than she ever is in the flesh, and from Kevin Kline, who delivers a pitch-perfect heroic parody. If only they could have turned the sound down a notch. Like Beauty, Hunchback is often too shrill and clamorous to be truly lyrical. The songs (by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz) are forgettable except for Judge Frollo’s twisted valentine "Hellfire," a number that made me wonder if the parents sitting around me were regretting having brought their pre-schoolers. The show tunes and the clownish gargoyles (though Alexander is hilarious) keep disrupting the grim enchantment.That’s Disney for you, though: Subtlety just isn’t in the Mouse’s blood. Yet ‘Hunchback,’ for all its ready-for-Broadway razzle-dazzle, is surprisingly radical. Quasimodo may not be Disney’s first physically flawed hero (Dumbo was there first), but he doesn’t win Esmeralda in a bogus happy ending, either. That is one hell of an advance for Disney. For any studio, these days.
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DOWNLOAD MOVIE Birds, The Just $2.99 for a complete movie! No additional software or browser plug-ins required! You can play them for unlimited number of times whenever you want. Downloaded movies will work perfectly on any PC, DVD player, PDA etc.
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The Birds is one of the best “creature features” ever made, possibly only rivaled by Jaws for best ever, though the latter does owe a debt of style to this film.  Though not entirely realistic, the visual effects are still reasonably workable even by today’s more discriminating special effects crowd, and it still manages to deliver a good deal of suspense and hair-raising tension.  While most people probably won’t view birds as scary before seeing this film, by the end, you will forever be reminded of this film when you find yourself surrounded by a large flock of our “feathered friends”. Tippi Hedren (Marnie, Citizen Ruth) plays Melanie Daniels, a spoiled, rich socialite who one day bumps into an attractive man named Mitch (Taylor, The Time Machine) in a pet store who is looking for a pair of lovebirds as a present for his younger sister (Cartwright, Goin’ South). Melanie decides to surprise the man with the birds but finds she has to travel to Bodega Bay to leave them with him. After she gets there, strange occurrences abound when the birds in the town seem to attack the humans for no good reason, then all hell breaks loose. With The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, The Trouble with Harry) demonstrates here why he is a true master of his craft, though it is arguably the last of his great masterworks.  One of the most striking elements of the film is Hitchcock’s ability to create tension and terror without utilizing any traditional score.  It seems that his early days making silent films paid off in his ability to create the proper mood through editing, montage, and proper story pacing.  If you had never heard of the film, you’d probably think that there is no way such a ridiculous premise could be remotely entertaining.  Credit Hitch; very few, if any at the time, could have taken such a laughable premise and made it work, and work so well.   The cast is solid, with Hitchcock going with a relative unknown in Tippi Hedren, a “find” from a diet soft drink commercial who caught his eye.  Though a relative novice, Hitch guides her well enough through the more difficult spots with finesse, mostly utilizing her for reaction shots that don’t require her to show a great deal of emotion other than romantic whimsy, until the trauma of the harrowing finale.  Taylor, Pleshette, and Tandy (batteries not included, Driving Miss Daisy) round up the fine cast of supporting players, and a very young Veronica Cartwright holds her own in one of her earliest roles. Watching the film today, one is struck by the fact that Hitchcock doesn’t even unleash his horror film until the second half, which today would be almost unheard of.  Perhaps this is why the film ends up working so well — we actually get to know the characters before they are put into mortal peril, and the result is one truly disturbing scene after another.  Most modern audiences will either grow impatient, or they will wonder why the film seems like a romance and horror film that somehow got mashed together, but, as it was in Psycho, this is Hitchcock toying with conventions.  He lulls us into an altogether different kind of story, where everything seems to be going according to plan until nature decides otherwise, pulling the rug out from under us.  Along with a very untraditional ending, Hitch coyly wipes the slate clean, as if to say that everything you came to know doesn’t matter any more; the only thing that matters is the danger of the here and now. — Followed by a vastly inferior, 1994 made-for-TV, in-name-only sequel, Birds II: Land’s End, which is only of note for having a small part for Tippi Hedren, though it isn’t as Melanie Daniels. Qwipster’s rating: 
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"A family film where I didn’t want to kill myself at the end" (Average)

The first ?Cheaper by the Dozen? was a family film nightmare of obnoxious kids and awful direction. The new sequel doesn?t feature much improvement in the directorial department, but there?s a mellower vibe to the film. Still no masterpiece, the baby steps toward genuine sentiment are appreciated, and make the sequel an unexpected family film success story.At the party for their daughter?s (Hilary Duff) high school graduation, Tom (Steven Martin) and Kate Baker (Bonnie Hunt) learn that their gigantic family (including Tom Welling, Piper Perabo, and Alyson Stoner) might be growing apart for the first time. Eager to rekindle the family feeling that has recently eluded them, the Bakers decide to spend their Labor Day holiday at a vacation house by their beloved Lake Winnetka. Once there, Tom struggles to keep the kids interested in family time and the outdoors, but finds that his old rival Jimmy Murtaugh (Eugene Levy), his trophy wife Sarina (Carmen Electra), and their brood of 8 kids are living across the lake; looking for a little competition, both in camping and parenting skills, they close out the summer with a bang. This being the holiday season, I guess there must be miracle or two. Get this: ?Cheaper by the Dozen 2? isn?t all that bad. A sequel to the 2003 original (itself a remake), ?Dozen 2? gets a makeover behind the camera, and the change really brightens up this franchise.The new director is Adam Shankman, who worked with Martin and Levy in their smash hit, ?Bringing Down the House,? but also brought the world the despicable ?Pacifier,? from earlier this year. Shankman is a studio company man; gladly making mainstream cinema for the masses, and this sequel doesn?t break the mold. What Shankman does show in ?Dozen 2? is restraint: a huge amount of mind-blowing restraint. Given a chance to make a sequel to one of the most excruciating and notorious family films of the last five years, and Shankman has the gall to pull back on the throttle? This movie completely blind-sided me.The original ?Dozen? was a film based around pranks the kids pulled on those they didn?t like, or just those they got in the way. Director Shawn Levy pitched this film at a tone that would be considered torture in some countries. He encouraged his cast to act as obnoxious as they possibly could, while also seemingly praising the Baker clan for their obscene and irresponsible breeding practices. After a five minute opener that explains why Hilary Duff, Tom Welling, and Piper Perabo won?t be in the film very much, ?Dozen 2? starts to tackle some interesting emotions: most notably, the empty nest syndrome that has finally come for Tom and Kate. There?s a bittersweet shade to this production, as Tom tries to keep his beloved family together, yet sees them growing up and heading in separate directions, be it through marriage, college, or just the pre-teen lure of boys. Of course, Shankman beats all honest heartache into the ground with an overactive score and abuse of close-ups, but the mere appearance of a genuine feeling in a film as plastic as this is cause enough to crack open the champagne and jitterbug.Also missing from the mix is the film?s reliance on bottom-feeding humor. Oh sure, there?s a callback to the ?meat underwear? sequence from the original film, and Shankman makes sure Martin?s testicles get slapped around as if they insulted his Momma, but the comic violence and general prank atmosphere is dialed way down this time around; it?s replaced with screenwriting that explores the growing pains (and dating woes) of the kids, and the summertime camp location, which is ripe for set-pieces. Again, Shankman doesn?t challenge the material, but the little efforts, including a fart reference here instead of a joke, make all the difference in the world. And Shankman is far more comfortable giving screentime to national treasure, Bonnie Hunt, who gets the film?s biggest laugh when Kate is forced to wear one of Sarina?s shirts for dinner. Hunt could do the Mommy role in her sleep, but she gives her scenes a slight kick, and shares warm chemistry with Steve Martin. Frankly, they could lose the kids entirely, as a film following these two actors would be much more appealing. It?s a strange feeling to come out of a movie aimed at kids, much less a sequel to something like ?Cheaper by the Dozen,? and not feel as though I need a shower and a vasectomy.?Dozen 2? is mild and charming, and gives me hope that maybe someone realizes that not all family films need to be entirely assaulting and insufferable.
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Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Possibly the slickest and most commercial romantic thriller of the 1960s, Charade
looks a bit mechanical and perhaps artificial today, but only because we’re a generation that has
spent considerable time studying the intricacies of Alfred Hitchcock movies. Before the
Truffaut/Hitchcock interview book, Stanley Donen and ace scribe Peter Stone understood Hitchcock’s
well enough so as to effectively outdo him at his own light-suspense game, at least superficially.
The movie is a perfect entertainment machine for its
time, balancing Audrey Hepburn charm against a witty script and sumptous production values.

Criterion’s DVD is a reprise of an OOP disc from several years back, with an improved 16:9
transfer.

Synopsis:

[Savant Main Page][Savant Links] [Article Index] [Review Index] [Savant 5 Year Report]

DVD Savant Text ? Copyright 2004 Glenn Erickson

Go BACK to the Savant Main Page.
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DOWNLOAD MOVIE Affair of the Necklace, The Just $2.99 for a complete movie! No additional software or browser plug-ins required! You can play them for unlimited number of times whenever you want. Downloaded movies will work perfectly on any PC, DVD player, PDA etc.
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"An embarrassing state of affairs." (Total Crap)

Repugnant period piece pre-French Revolution, beyond even laughably bad, with Hilary Swank and company colluding to retrieve a ?stolen? necklace.It?s filled with unsubtle flashbacks, aimless coloration gimmicks, barren sexuality and pedantic direction. In other words, there is hardly a moment where something isn?t being hit over your head. It?s pathetic and humiliating for all involved, and director Charles Shyer gets more laughs for this than those in his sterile comedies combined (Father of the Bride, Father of the Bride, Part II). This is rather a very embarrassing state of affairs.With Adrian Brody, Jonathan Pryce, Brian Cox, Joely Richardson, Christopher Walken and Hayden Panettiere.[Not to be bothered with.]
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The Angry Red Planet (1959)

This Rebel Breed’ Opens on Double Bill

ANYONE who doubts that adolescent recreations have changed since the days of Andy Hardy can find ample evidence of evolution in Warner Brothers’ “This Rebel Breed,” which came to neighborhood theatres yesterday.

In this ninety-minute catalogue of popular indoor sports among the juvenile set, high school athletes are observed indulging in narcotics, rock ‘n’ roll, interracial love and war, and assorted forms of competitive violence. A public-school education as depicted on the screen may have its shortcomings, but a student could hardly find it dull.

Advertised as an unvarnished story of race prejudice and discrimination among teen-agers, “This Rebel Breed” substitutes action for insight but maintains enough excitement to place it a cut or two above the usual sensationalized products of the genre.

Mark Damon as a detective of Mexican-Negro ancestry, Rita Moreno as a pregnant student, Richard Rust as a gang leader and Diane Cannon as his moll competently carry the plot toward its climactic tri-racial rumble. Richard L. Bare, who directed economically, spends more time describing vices than trying to analyze them, and keeps things moving at a lively clip.

The co-feature, American-International’s “The Angry Red Planet,” solemnly warns its audiences not to go to Mars. Stubborn patrons who ignore the advice will discover that the planet looks like a cardboard illustration from Flash Gordon and is inhabited by carnivorous plants, a giant amoeba and a species resembling a three-eyed green ant.

The four scientists on the expedition are a bearded professor, a comic from Brooklyn, a stalwart hero and a luscious redhead. Any observer who cannot guess which two come back alive should have a fine time at the film.

The Casts

THIS REBEL BREED; screen play by Morris Lee Green, from a story by William Rowland and Irma Berk; produced by Mr. Rowland; directed by Richard L. Bare and released by Warner Brothers. Running time: ninety minutes.

Lola . . . . . Rita Moreno

Frank . . . . . Mark Damon

Lieutenant Brooks . . . . . Gerald Mohr

Buck . . . . . Richard Rust

Don . . . . . Douglas Hume

Wiggles . . . . . Diane Cannon

and

THE ANGRY RED PLANET; screen play by Ib Melchoir and Sid Pink, from a story by Mr. Pink; produced by Mr. Pink and Norman Maurer; directed by Mr. Melchoir; a Sino Production released by American International. Both at neighborhood theatres. Running time: eighty-three minutes.

Col. Tom O’Banion . . . . . Gerald Mohr

Dr. Iris Ryan . . . . . Nora Hayden

Prof. Theodore Gettell . . . . . Les Tremayne

Sgt. Sam Jacobs . . . . . Jack Kruschen

Maj. Gen. George Treegar . . . . . Paul Hahn

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The Movie: Goodbye Lover stars Patricia Arquette as a manipulative seductress after some life insurance with her various lovers. This film wasn’t as bad as many of the reviews I’ve read have passed it off as, but it wasn’t a good movie either. The problem with this movie is that the whole cast except for two people are completely oblivious to what is going on around them. With all of the characters acting like complete idiots, it’s easy to get away with murder. Ellen Degeneres is simply perfect in her role as a cynical police officer who doesn’t believe any of the stories that are being passed around. The cinematography is also superb in this film. The brilliant use of mirrors throughout the film add to the seductive nature of the characters (esp. Arquette).

The Picture: The picture was very good. It was crisp and especially clear during the darker scenes (and this movie has plenty of them). The picture was also great at providing high contrast between the white in Arquette’s dresses and her extremely blonde hair. The picture was also very clear when dealing with reflections from the many mirrors utilized throughout the movie.

The Sound: The sound didn’t stand out very much with this film, which is both bad and good. The fact that I didn’t notice any defaults or errors is good, but the fact that nothing caught my attention isn’t. Overall, very midiocre sound with really no exceptional or degrading qualities.

The Extras: Extras? You’d think by now Warner Bros. would learn that we like to see extras on a disc. Most likely, a Special Edition will come out and Warner is just milking us for a few extra bucks. I’d love a commentary by Arquette and director Roland Joff?. Absent from this DVD is every extra but the trailer and production notes which are just a series of screens with a few notes on each.

Conclusion: While most people didn’t really enjoy this film, I found many parts of it to be intriguing along with the many twists and turns it takes. The two lead female characters are both exceptional - Arquette and Degeneres, and I usually don’t like Ellen in many roles. She is great at playing the cynical bitch and turns in a great performance. The DVD lacks extras, but delivers a both Anamorphic Widescreen and Pan & Scan versions on opposite sides. Not quite enough to justify the $25 MSRP, but still a good disc nonetheless.

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So says Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison, in what not necessarily was intended as an in-joke reference to the actress playing her. (She said the same line in an earlier show.) Helen Mirren returns to her famous television character for perhaps last time in Prime Suspect - The Final Act (2006), a two-part, three-hour character drama / police procedural filmed immediately after her stellar and delicately contrasting work as Queen Elizabeths I (in a 2005 television miniseries) and II (in The Queen) so the inference of that line is unavoidable yet entirely appropriate.

Just the seventh Prime Suspect story since 1991, and only the second in the last decade (it’s a shame they couldn’t have made at least one annually), The Final Act is generally excellent and Mirren, not surprisingly, is superb. Its compelling mystery is, in some respects, a bit derivative of earlier Prime Suspect stories, but Frank Deasy’s bleak teleplay ingeniously weaves elements of Jane Tennison’s latest and last investigation directly and indirectly with its deeply troubled protagonist.

On the cusp of retirement, Jane leads the search for Sallie Sturdy, a missing 14-year-old girl early on presumed murdered. The girl clearly has fallen in with the wrong crowd, news to her frantic parents, Tony and Ruth (Gary Lewis and Katy Murphy), with Dad especially not handling the stress well at all. Meanwhile, Jane is drawn both professionally and personally to one of Sallie’s classmates, Penny Philips (Laura Greenwood), a rebellious but obviously thoughtful and intelligent teenager in whom Jane sees more than a passing resemblance of her younger self.

Earlier Prime Suspects dealt with the rampant sexism Jane was up against in her department, and in her related failed romantic relationships with men. These elements are largely absent, taking a distant back seat to more serious and immediate problems: Jane’s alcoholism, now at a point where it’s beginning to interfere with her work and which completely dominates her personal life, and coming to grips with the mortality of her father, Arnold Tennison (Frank Finley), dying of cancer in a London hospital.

Jane’s alcoholism is treated with unnerving, unflinching realism. Her self-inflicted black-outs are becoming known to her colleagues, who call her with case updates at night but which she forgets utterly by morning. During an interrogation, she accuses a suspect of being a heavy drinker because of the alcohol she smells on his breath, only to have him angrily correct her: that’s Jane’s boozy breath everyone in the room smells. She drives drunk, while on the case no less, and at one point, totally smashed, she climbs into her car and there’s enormous tension whether she’s going to try and drive in her condition because it’s clear that if she does she’ll probably kill someone, or herself.

Her relationship with her father, and her denial that he’s going to die even after he’s accepted it, is somewhat more conventional, but Deasy’s script carefully integrates it and Jane’s look back into her past (she spends time in her father’s home, the place she grew up in) with her relationship with Penny. Indeed, the blurring of professional and personal lines between Jane and her troubles with Penny and the investigation is as deliberately disturbing and problematic as Jane’s drinking.

Most poignantly, the pressures from her superiors to clean up her act lead to the show’s most poignant moments while in a sense bringing the series full circle. At last compelled to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, she bumps into her former boss, retired Detective Superintendent Bill Otley (Tom Bell, of Prime Suspects 1 & 3), whom all those years ago had been her sexist nemesis. His surprising humility - and their shared experiences and addictions - is the heart of the show. Tom Bell the actor died just days before the show premiered and indeed on camera he looks like a dying man. Mirren and the crew must have at least suspected this and in any case Bell’s condition inadvertently adds to the emotion of his scenes with Mirren.

(Ironically, Frank Finley’s spot-on performance aside, he’s positively robust at 80, a complete contrast to Bell. Finley not only doesn’t physically look ill, though he suggests it in his performance, he almost looks like he could be Jane’s husband as much as her father.)

Deasy likewise does a good job carrying over elements and atmosphere from earlier Prime Suspect shows, especially the blessing/curse of new technologies, from myriad surveillance cameras that are able to track one suspects movements all over London (a reference perhaps, to terrorism paranoia and privacy encroachments) to teenagers tied at the hip to their cell phones, blithely text messaging their pals even while being questioned by the police. Along similar lines and like earlier shows, working class London is seen as a hellish, apocalyptic place to live, especially for impressionable teens, one far removed from the gentrified tourist areas, a place of graffiti-ridden public housing, drugs, guns - the world of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange come to pass.

Holding it all together is Helen Mirren in another magnificent character study. In a refreshing contrast to the flip and/or self-righteous cops seen on many an American detective show, Mirren’s Jane Tennison is intelligent but testy (bitchy isn’t quite the right word), instinctive and methodical, austere yet lonely. Jane is one of TV’s all-time great detectives and Mirren has given it one of the medium’s most memorable performances, in large part because the character is at once so smart yet also so believably, unblinkingly flawed.

Video & Audio

Prime Suspect - The Final Act is presented in its original 16:9 format with widescreen enhancement. The image is strong throughout, and the slightly muted colors do justice to its fine cinematography. Unlike the earliest Prime Suspect DVDs, which unforgivably were cut American television versions (with profanity bleeped out) this DVD is unedited and wisely presented in its original two parts over two single-sided discs. The Dolby stereo mix is on par with 2006 standards but the disc has no subtitle options though the disc is close-captioned. Americans unacquainted with the more severe English and Scottish accents may strain to follow all the dialog.

Extra Features

The main supplement is an excellent 45-minute documentary on the entire Prime Suspect series, in 16:9 enhanced widescreen, that includes clips from earlier shows, and interviews with key actors, writers, producers, and the like, including Mirren. It’s an enlightening show, particularly in detailing the development of the character and some of the devices Mirren used to bring verisimilitude to the Tennison: why she never folded her arms, why her character reaches out to touch her colleagues on the shoulder, etc.) The show is full of spoilers, and definitely should not be viewed until after viewing the main program. Fairly good cast filmographies and a photo gallery round out the package.

Parting Thoughts

Is this really the last Prime Suspect? The documentary seems to think so, though the door isn’t entirely shut on another show down the road. If it does turn out to be the last, Prime Suspect - The Final Act says goodbye in a drama worthy of its fascinating leading character. Highly Recommended.

Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV’s most recent essays appear in Criterion’s new three-disc Seven Samurai DVD and BCI Eclipse’s The Quiet Duel. His audio commentary for Invasion of Astro Monster is now available.
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