Vertical Limit (Superbit)

Mountains. They are the bread and butter of the Exotic Action Adventure director, whether they’re being used for skiing on top of a cello in a Bond film, used for snorting in Better Off Dead, or used as a backdrop to Sly Stallone going “muhummanahh hummannah� in Cliffhanger. That last one was a surprise mega-hit for Stallone and director Renny Harlin - and why not? After all, it had just about everything you could throw at a mountain packed into it. Dizzying heights, dangerous climbs, avalanches, bombs, terrorists, romance, people falling kilometres to their deaths screaming “aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh� - with all that, who cared that the lead actor was talking in a language that hadn’t been invented yet, and that the entire movie suffered from a terminal case of That Syndrome? It was fun, it was brainless, and it made most people who saw it vow to never, ever go climb a mountain.

Vertical Limit, made seven years later, is basically Cliffhanger 2. Its similarities with its silly sibling are numerous. There’s the mountain, of course (in this case, the infamous K2, with New Zealand’s Mt Cook acting as a very very big body double). There’s the rescue of people trapped high up on said mountain. There’s the greedy, flamboyant-evil-bastard bad guy who’s going to put everyone at risk of death. There’s the rescue deadline, set up in a these-are-the-rules fashion early on. And of course there’s the overblown emotional back-story set up at the start of the film that causes the lead character to walk around swathed in guilt, thereby giving him his own personal mountain to climb as well as the actual physical mountain which is kinda symbolic in a moving but not so moving as to be distracting kind of way.

Well, okay, there are key plot differences too, but not many. Where Vertical Limit gets ahead of its oxygen-deprived relation is in the little details - the acting is solid, the scenery spectacular, the explosions big and the effects a lot better than the low-tech rear projection in Cliffhanger (though there are still embarrassing moments - just like The Crimson Rivers, the avalanches look ridiculous). The plot’s full of holes, but not so many holes that it’s in danger of sinking. There’s adrenalin aplenty, the usual heart-wrenching (and gut-wrenching) pathos and bad dialogue (and a refreshing lack of That Syndrome moments), and so many crises you’ll be genuinely glad you’re not watching this with Tweek from South Park. The editing is first-rate, and that helps sell action sequences that otherwise might have looked comical.

Basically, it’s a big obnoxious action flick with a mission; to show you the real reason why 99.999% of the population doesn't climb mountains. The answer is simple: when you fall off, it hurts.

This release is part of Columbia Tristar’s “Superbit� range of movie-only discs, available in this country only in HMV stores at a daringly inflated $50 asking price. You can read DVDnet contributor Tony Lai’s review of the original release by clicking the link in the “related links� sidebar on this page.

First of all, some words about “Superbit�.

There has been a great deal of hype, a lot of misinformation and some silly conjecture about “Superbit� discs, so let’s set the record straight on a few key facts. Firstly, the claims made on the back covers of these titles are misleading and, on occasion, flat-out wrong. The claim that the discs “utilize (sic) a special high bit rate transfer process that optimizes (sic) video quality� is patently ridiculous, for starters. These discs are produced by the very same authoring facility that put together the original releases, using exactly the same high definition masters as source material; the only thing that has changed is the encoding bitrate, which has been raised to an appreciably higher level. This, of course, means less visual information is “thrown away� during encoding, but there’s no mystery or magic about it. Many of the region 4 titles you already own have been encoded at similarly high bitrates.

Where Sony’s DVD Center excels is in their ability to deliver superb quality from modest encoding bitrates, and they’ve made that a policy for years. The encoding process on “Superbit� discs is, in fact, less of a challenge for them, as fewer scenes will challenge the encoding process and require tweaking.

Another statement made on the back cover is that “all Superbit DVDs start with high definition masters and double the bit rate of the original release�. Sounds impressive, unless you happen to know that almost all of Columbia Tristar’s DVD releases right from the beginning have been sourced from HD masters. And the claim of “double the bit rate� comes from the original US promo guff for their Superbit discs, where the bit rate was very often doubled thanks to the use of a dual layered disc versus a single layer on the original release. The claim does not hold up as a comparison in this territory, yet it’s chanted almost as a mantra by unsuspecting customers.

So how’s the picture quality on the “Superbit� Vertical Limit? Well, it’s excellent - but then, so was the original 2001 release, drawn from the same source material. The average bitrate here is 7.71Mbit/sec, with the rate getting as low as 5 and only regularly reaching DVD’s own “vertical limit� of 10Mb/sec in the second half of the film - and even then, not for long. The bitrate is most certainly higher than the original release, but not “double�. Most people will not be able to tell the difference between the two, and with large displays those who can spot differences in background detail really need to ask themselves whether they’re watching a movie or reading the fine print.

The transfer itself is reasonable - good with detail, but somewhat lacking in depth and prone to washing out during darker scenes. “Superbit� can’t fix that, needless to say.

(Some trivia: the cinematographer on Vertical Limit was David Tattersall, who would shoot The Majestic as his next project. So maybe it was something of an omen, then, that the airline which sponsors the trip to the K2 summit in this story, the mythical airline whose logo is all over the base camp tents is… Majestic!)

The movie is presented on a dual layered DVD with what has to be one of the finest layer changes yet seen - even on our review player, a Sony which shamelessly gives away even the best and fastest layer changes, we simply could not spot it.

The often-mentioned claim that “Superbit� discs use every spare byte of disc space (a claim NOT made by the packaging or press releases) is resoundingly raspberried by this disc, which at 6.83G has over a gigabyte of unused space that could have been put to use for, say, a trailer and some decent menus!

Two audio tracks are provided on this disc, both English-language 5.1 surround mixes. The first track is 448Kb/sec Dolby Digital, while the second is 768Kb/sec (“half-bitrate�) DTS. Both sound absolutely superb; the DTS track is mastered at a substantially higher level than the Dolby Digital track, making direct comparison difficult, but accounting for level differences there’s really very little to separate the two. If you have DTS, use the track provided here, but if you don’t, you’ll still be plenty happy with the Dolby Digital offering.

Vertical Limit’s sound mix is a stunner, an exceptionally active multi-channel thrill ride that makes full use of the 360 degree sound stage and wields the subwoofer channel as a weapon of mass lounge room destruction. If your neighbours hate you now, they’ll be plotting revenge against you after two hours of this.

Turn it up loud anyway. It may not be audio realism, but it’s damn good fun.

There are no extras on “Superbit� discs like this one, even though there’s actually plenty of room for a trailer or two. There are, though, a pair of audio-system trailers provided, one of which plays before the movie depending on which sound system you select. If you choose Dolby you’ll get the infernal and accursed “City� trailer, while if you choose DTS you’ll get the even more accursed, scratchy and distortion-riddled “Digital Experience� monstrosity. Be afraid. Or better still, hit the “next chapter� button. Quickly.

Columbia Tristar’s press material states that “as the most high tech, high quality DVD products on the market, these titles are affordably priced at RRP $49.95.�

The reality? The “Superbit� titles cost substantially less to author then the original releases. Why? A suitable video transfer already exists and can be reused; the compression process is faster and can take advantage of data about difficult sections that was gained the first time around; no time or money is spent on complex menu authoring, editing, mastering and encoding of extra features, or synchronising and encoding multiple languages. They cost substantially less to market as they’re targeting those who are already aware of the films they contain.

Sure, they look good. But at $50 they’re a rip-off.