Night Falls On Manhattan
Paramount Pictures
1.85:1/Dolby Digital 5.1&2.0/Spanish Subtitles/English Captions/Commentary
Andy Garcia stars in this story about an idealistic young lawyer thrown into a scandal of police corruption. We see his character in the begining of the film being prepared for his early trials as a lawyer; at the same time we see the character's father, played by the great Ian Holm, on a police stakeout. Holm's character is wounded in a tragic battle of gunfire, which leaves three other police officers dead.
Young Sean Casey(Garcia) is assigned to his father's trial(which is somewhat unbelieveable); I won't tell who wins the case, but what makes the film so fascinating is that it becomes doubtful who is telling the truth and maybe, even, it may seem like no one is telling the truth.
There are very good performances here from Andy Garcia, Richard Dreyfuss and Ian Holm; director Sydney Lumet has assembled a great cast for this drama and it's a well done, intelligent film that is absorbing and fascinating.
the DVD:
Picture: Good. Paramount has used what looks to be the laserdisc master on this film as well, but it doesn't suffer from the artifacting and shimmering that are apparent on most of the other new Paramount releases such as "The Rainmaker". Although the movie has a "murky" look to it, images in general are crisp and clear. Flesh tones are presented well and contrast looks good on the disc. Overall, a pleasing presentation, although not quite perfect.
Audio:Being a talky film, "Night Falls On Manhattan" is not very showy in terms of sound, except for a couple of scenes. Dialogue and score is recorded well and is clear and crisp. Why I am giving the audio on this disc a failing grade is simply the fact that you can not change audio channels during the film with your remote control. This has always been a problem with Paramount discs, but it especially angered me on this disc since there are two additional commentary tracks. You are stuck listening to the commentary; you can't change during a scene to the other commentary or simply choose, mid-film, to go back to the plain dialogue. I loved the commentary tracks(especially the one with director Sidney Lumet, and the other, with the producers as well as Andy Garcia, is good too) but the fact is, the ability not to switch here is simply infuriating. From now on, I will be deducting grades from all Paramount discs that do not have the ability to switch audio from the remote.
Menus:Simplistic Paramount Menus. I shall now just call them SPMs.
Extras:Lumet's commentary is fascinating. I really appreciate the fact that Paramount *did* include two audio commentary tracks, but to not have the ability to switch out of the track is really annoying. Trailer as well.
Region:1
Rating:R
Running Time:113min.
Subtitles:Spanish
Captions:English
Grades:
Film:A-
Picture:B
Audio:D+
Extras:A-
Menus:F
Overall Grade:B