Snake Eyes
Paramount Pictures
2.35:1/Dolby Digital 5.1/English Dolby Surround/French Dolby Surround
NOT 16x9 Enhanced
Region:1
Also: French and Spanish Dolby Surround
Also: English Captions
Running Time: 98 Min
Rated:R
The Film:
Imagine a town lying right below a giant dam, which is slowly filling up with water. That's simply how I see "Snake Eyes", a film that starts off strongly, but, suddenly, a crack here, a crack there, and suddenly, you have a flood on your hands.
The film starts off with a steadycam tracking shot that's spectacular. It's not really the shot itself though, but the explosive performance of Nicholas Cage, jumping and riffing through the halls of Atlantic City, bouncing off the walls as the camera follows him along his way, up through control booths and down basement halls until he finally arrives at ringside, where he meets up with an old friend, a millitary officer played by Gary Sinese.
Cage starts off having a lot of fun playing a sleazy Atlantic City cop, bouncing around, acting like a nut. And he's fun to watch. And for a while, the movie is fun to watch as well.
As the boxing match begins, we learn the whole story. Sinese's officer is here to guard the Secretary Of Defense during the match. Slowly but surely, though, we begin to feel like there's something going on. And of course, there is. Behind the scene, an assassination is being plotted, and midway through the match, it takes place.
Director Brian Depalma has brought together thousands of extras, who are now locked in the building. Thousands and thousands of eyewitnesses, could they have been the shooter? Unfortunately, that possibility is never played up as we stay with the principal characters:, the boxing champ, Sinese, Cage, and the others in the group of plotters.
It's all a fantastic setup, and the arena is a phenomenal place to film, with a maze of backrooms, cameras and hidden corners. It's unfortunate that all of this comes to a complete stop when the answer to all our questions is pretty much revealed completely in the first half of the film, leaving the audience to hope for a build-up...conspiracy upon conspiracy, but, that never comes. What we get instead is simply the viewpoint of the assassination from all of the characters involved, with a lot of nifty camera movements by Depalma.Suddenly, the "dam" begins to break in spots. The film, from this point on, begins to fall apart. The very best parts of the film, much like Scorsese's "Casino" showed behind-the-scenes in Vegas, show the inner workings of the arena in the control room, but those scenes are few and far between.
And the film begins to drown in impossible coincidences. Cage's character, once sarcastic and hyper, is now serious and, fairly uninteresting. It's as if the life drains out of the character as the film draws on(as if to say, "OK, enough already!"). Sinese is a dull, unexciting character, who we never learn enough about to be interested in. It's when Cage, the character that the audience is following, falls apart, that I lost interest. The script itself doesn't stand on it's own, and it only gets worse as the minutes tick away. Minute by minute, life begins to drain out of the film as it becomes less and less energetic. We already know the answers, so....why watch? As the film wraps, the damn breaks, flooding the screen with one of the worst endings in memory. The waters simply wash away the movie as it ends on a completely opposite note of the thrilling begining. Blame it on the script.
The DVD:
Picture Quality: "Snake Eyes" is generally in lower light with a few exceptions and even so, Paramount has done a decent job with this disc. It's the second Paramount disc lately that I've been pleased with; the quality here isn't as good as that other great disc "The Truman Show", but still it's passable. Images are sharp and detailed,
contrast is excellent and when there are some interesting colors in the film, they look vibrant on the disc. Take a look at Cage's shirt in the opening scenes or the final scene on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Black level in the picture is strong too. Color saturation is very good and overall, images
are rendered well on this disc. There is a problem with shimmering in a few spots, but there are no other major compression artifacts to speak of. Although it's not a flawless transfer, it's above average.Shadow detail is quite good too, especially in some of the final scenes. This disc could definitely have used anamorphic enhancement, though. Even on a standard television, anamorphic enhanced
discs clearly look better.It's very unfortunate that Paramount, Fox and Disney have decided not to go with anamorphic enhancement. Still, Paramount has definitely improved from the first DVD I saw from them: their disc of "The Rainmaker" was a shimmering mess. They've improved
here, but there's still a lot of ground for them to cover.
Audio Quality: Excellent. The room is filled with the sounds of the cheering crowd in the opening scenes at the boxing match and the details of the fight as the fighters connect. There's also some great sounds of lightning and thunder as the hurricane rages outside the arena. The dialogue and the hypnotic score are recorded crisply and clearly with no
distortion.
Extras:Still nothing from Paramount. When even Fox is planning to finally add extra content to one of their discs(the upcoming "X-Files:The Movie"), it's pretty unfortunate that Paramount is still stuck in the featureless group that now only includes it and Disney. The only extra on this disc isn't an extra at all. It's just the trailer.
Menus:Very basic Paramount menus. The picture from the cover is the background.
The Grades:
Film:C+
Audio:A
Video:B
Extras:D
Menus:D
Overall:B+
