Director
Ron Howard

Cast
Tom Cruise,
Nicole Kidman,
Thomas Gibson,
Robert Prosky

Music
John WIlliams

Far and Away on a small hillside Irish farm lives Joseph Donnelly (Tom Cruise) and his two brothers. The Donnelly family rent their land from the laden wealth of Daniel Christie (Robert Prosky). That is, until the day of Josephs father’s funeral. It is on this day that Mr Christie’s right hand man comes by to remind the Donnelly’s that their rent is overdue. He gets some flack from Joseph and consequently the Donnelly’s house is burnt down.

This is the queue for Joseph to seek revenge. He travels far with his trusty donkey until he comes by the well-off Daniel Christie, who is actually not such a bad person. Joseph however still try’s to kill him and through his own stupidity is then laid up under lock and key in the Christie mansion. Enter the foxy red head Shannon (Nicole Kidman) who is more than curious about this young man.

Shannon has wild aspirations to travel to America to become a modern woman. There she hopes to participate in a free land rush. She figures that Joseph would be a good slave to take with her. Shannon saves Joseph from certain death and they both run off to America. It is here that Shannon starts to learn about life the hard way and finds that Joseph is more looking after her than being her slave. Needing money to survive Joseph takes up competition boxing and makes a killing.

All is not so rosy however and everything comes crashing to a halt when Shannon’s family arrives in town. Life goes on and they meet up again at the land rush where everyone claims their stake in history.

So How Does This Transfer Hold Up?

VIDEO
Overall the Anamorphic Widescreen transfer was pretty good. I can’t say that I really have a beef about anything but then there’s nothing to really rave about either. The picture was generally sharp and clear throughout. There are some instances where edge enhancement and some slight shimmering were visible, but unless you were looking for it you wouldn’t really notice it. Colours were probably the highlight of the transfer; I couldn’t find any faults here. The colours were consistent and always reflected the mood and created the scene for the film. Usually nice warm tones with some bright colour at appropriate times to liven things up. Shadow detail was quite good but could have been improved at times.

Ironically this feature length film was shot on 65mm film and filmed on a 70mm camera (the other 5-mm used for soundtracks) and considered to be a vast improvement in quality from the (cheaper) anamorphic 35-mm film. Unfortunately though this transfer does not reflect that great improvement at all.

AUDIO
The Dolby Digital 5.1 track was also very lack lustre. As a 5.1 mix there is very little use of bass (LFE) until 2/3rds the way through the film and even then only a few brief sound effects kick in. There is also a lack of use of the surrounds where there was a lot of potential to create ambience and sound effects they were sadly not used as much as one would have liked. The film is very much a dialogue driven and as such it is good to hear nice clean dialogue for the entirety of the film.

The musical score from John Williams is great and brings the film to the forefront regularly. Nice classical pieces were not overly noticeable but have definitely created a big impact on the effectiveness of the film.

EXTRAS
Mmm well, not what I would have hoped for. Only the usual trailer, production notes and cast and crew bios. Being a landmark film in it’s time for the type of film it was shot on it would have been nice to have at least seen a making of doco to provide more information on this technology and how it increases the quality of the film.

Overall I would recommend the film for entertainment value, and if you are a Cruise and/or Kidman fan then by all means grab it. If you are looking for superior quality though you might want to think twice.

Review Equipment
TV: GE 68cm (16:9 selectable)
DVD: Samsung DVD907 (via S-Video)
Receiver/Proc: Sansui A505/Sony Amp & Yamaha DSP-E390
Speakers:-
Fronts: Wharfdale Diamond R6 (on a pair of custom made stands you'd KILL for)
Centre: Venturi
Rears: Sony bookshelf

- Reviewed 14th March 2000