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  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Widescreen 2.35:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  • Dual Layer (RSDL )
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  • French: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  Subtitles
    English, French, Spanish
  Extras
  • 4 Theatrical trailer - Theatrical Trailer plus other Morgan Creek DVDs
  • Filmographies
White Sands
Warner Bros./Warner Bros. . R4 . COLOR . 101 mins . M15+ . PAL

  Feature
Contract

Willem Dafoe (Mississippi Burning, Shadow of the Vampire) plays redneck cop Ray Dolezal who gets himself caught up in the middle of a mystery that includes the FBI, the CIA, a naked woman, a crazy redhead, a million dollars and Samuel L Jackson. Ray discovers a dead man who committed suicide who had a briefcase containing $500,000. But in order to solve the mystery, he takes the role of the dead man, Bob Spenser, but winds himself into more trouble. But the deceitful tale is just beginning, with a different surprise around each corner, just who can you trust? Also starring Samuel L Jackson as the FBI agent, Mickey Rourke as a weapons runner and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as a deceptive, mysterious woman, White Sands offers more than the average thriller.

  Video
  Audio
  Extras
Contract

First, it must be said that this disc is in the NTSC video format, and requires an NTSC compatible DVD player and television in order to receive a smooth picture. So the entire movie does suffer from the lower quality that NTSC does offer. This film is framed in the theatrical release aspect of 2.35:1, and is 16x9 enhanced.

For a 1992 film, the picture quality is very nice, but there are a few small problems with it. During the opening credit sequence the white writing appears blurred, as if it is the product of over compression of the video. However, the colours are very rich and bold, and come up superbly on the DVD. The beautiful settings including White Sands National Park in New Mexico are captured with great light levels, and details. However, the entire video is slightly blurred, which does detract from the superb details have been captured on film.

The colours are hard to sum up. In the bright, outdoor scenes, the skin tones are very yellow, but inside they appear very green and dull. It is hard to summarise the entire palette of this movie, but overall, the colours are decent for a 1992 film, and the NTSC playback.

The film suffers from no film artefacts, no MPEG artefacts or grain, but does suffer from some minor aliasing.

There are two audio tracks, an English and a French Dolby Digital 5.1 track, and maybe to your surprise (maybe not?) the English is the prime listening option, given that the film is in English. Right from the word go, the 5.1 channels are all tested. The Morgan Creek logo gives the subwoofer a good test, and also the fidelity of the front channels.

The surround channels throughout the entire film are loud, and a little too loud to be excused. They are mainly used to carry the sound effects, which are just duplicates of the front channels. This is extremely irritating as there is a slight delay between the front and the rear outputs which gives a slight echo. This is noticeable during the opening few scenes, but does get better as the movie progresses. In the beginning there is some incredibly bad foley effects, which don’t really help the surround speaker problem. The funniest sound effects would be between 11:10 and 11:40 where a body is being autopsied. There are no words that can describe these effects; you just simply have to hear them. The surround channels are also used independently for right rear and left rear effects, but this is kept to a minimum. The subwoofer really gets a full workout throughout the whole film, following the lines of the Morgan Creek logo. Except at one point where an explosion occurs, the subwoofer barely makes a noise and leaves it up to the other speakers, which just seems an odd thing to do.

The extras are limited to a trailer for White Sands and also 3 other Morgan Creek DVDs - Chill Factor, Diabloque and Pacific Heights. Also included are filmographies for the leads in White Sands. Nothing thrilling but what would you expect for a 1992 film?

The film is quite intricate and detailed, but is let down by the NTSC video and the loud rear speaker 5.1 mix. Definitely worth a hire just to see the story, but not a must-have by any means.


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  •   And I quote...
    "A deceptive and intriguing film from 1992 that has a decent transfer, but lacks in extras."
    - Martin Friedel
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Nowa DS-8318
    • TV:
          TEAC 68cm CTV
    • Speakers:
          Teac PLS-60 Home Theatre System
    • Centre Speaker:
          Teac PLS-60 Home Theatre System
    • Surrounds:
          Teac PLS-60 Home Theatre System
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard RCA
    • Video Cables:
          standard s-video
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