Jagged Edge
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Cast: Glenn Close, Jeff Bridges, Peter Coyote, Rober Loggia
Extras: Trailers, Talent Files, Production Notes
Rating:
What starts out like a very atmospheric thriller, quickly turns out as a court room drama that revolves around a contrived murder case. A woman is slaughtered in her beach house and her shattered husband hires a lawyer to unravel the mysteries of the case, but eventually the case turns on him. Glenn Close, Jeff Bridges and Robert Loggia help giving this film some substance, but it undeniable, that the film suffers a little from its own uninspiredness.
Columbia TriStar Home Video presents ’Jagged Edge’ on a double sided DVD in this release. One side contains the movie’s theatrical widescreen presentation in an anamorphically enhanced 1.85:1 aspect ratio while the second side of the disc contains an open matte transfer of the movie that adds additional picture information at the top and bottom of the screen. The image quality between the two versions is quite striking, most likely because the fullframe presentation stems from an older source, while the anamorphic widescreen presentation comes from a new high-resolution transfer. The fullframe version exhibits visible signs of noise and grain, colors are muted, if not pale, and the level of detail in the image is average at best. However the widescreen presentation of the movie presents itself with a highly detailed transfer that is free of grain and shows rather good color reproduction and well defined edges. Fleshtones are natural and although some slight signs of edge-enhancement are evident, the transfer has a beautifully natural look. If you ever wanted to see the quality differences between an old and a new transfer, here is your chance.
’Jagged Edge’ is coming with a Dolby Surround audio track in English and a wide selection of language subtitles. The audio track is without distortion, although the limited frequency response gives the dialogue track a bit of a nasal quality. This limitation in the sonic spectrum is fortunately not so much noticeable in the music score, giving John Barry’s orchestral arrangements a natural, although unexciting, timbre. Since the nature of the film is mostly dramatic in emotions rather than actions, this is hardly distracting from the overall experience however.
’Jagged Edge’ is a solid court room drama, with a good cast. The film certainly has it flaws, but overall it makes for an enjoyable evening at the very least, especially since Columbia TriStar’s presentation on this DVD is giving the film a glossier look than it ever had. The widescreen version, that is.
