Film Rates

This is a good, old-fashioned war movie. Made toward the end of Hollywood's golden age, it is exciting, large-scale, and patriotic. It stars Gregory Peck as the commander of a squadron of Flying Fortress crews stationed in England at the beginning of the US involvement in World War 2. This was long before any ground action, and the Americans were often the only Allied troops fighting the Germans. They suffered heavy casualties, flew an impossible number of missions, and suffered horrifically high casualty rates. Nonetheless, as Peck must convince his crews, theirs was an important mission, perhaps the most important in the early stages of the war.

Filmed with Panavision cameras and lenses on 35mm film with 26 cameras, including one helicopter, AC/DC: Live at Donington is presented in high definition 1080p on this Blu-ray Disc release in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio. For this release, Sony-BMG and Columbia Music Video have provided three listening options: 48kHz/24bit PCM stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps) and PCM 5.1 48kHz/24bit. Because of the use of so many cameras from various distances and the differing levels of lighting throughout the performance the quality of the picture does vary, often times from one shot to the next, but this has more to do with the things I've mentioned than with the encoding. For example, in certain darker shots from more distant cameras, there is a higher level of grain present than in well-lit shots from cameras closer to or actually on the stage where little to no grain can be seen at all.

Francis Ford Coppola is both scripter and director of this drama adapted from the John Grisham novel about broke, inexperienced Memphis law-school graduate Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon), ready to take any job he can find. Signing on with slimy Bruiser Stone (Mickey Rourke), he learns ambulance-chasing tactics from Bruiser's leg man Deck Schifflet (Danny DeVito) and meets battered teen Kelly Riker (Claire Danes), abused by her husband (Andrew Shue). Baylor has his own clients – friendly Miss Birdie (Teresa Wright), who has a large estate to dispose of, and desperate Dot Black (Mary Kay Place), whose son Donnie Ray (Johnny Whitworth) has terminal leukemia. Medical intervention could have spared his life, but the Great Benefit Insurance Company denied coverage, preventing Donnie Ray from getting a life-saving bone marrow transplant. Rudy finds a place to live in the apartment behind Miss Birdie's house. Deck and Rudy split from Bruiser to start their small firm. When they take on the Blacks' case, they go up against the insurance company's high-priced law firm and are continually thwarted by slick lawyer Leo F. Drummond (Jon Voight).