Deadline

"SYRIANA" IT AIN'T

DEADLINE is a made-for-television movie, filmed in Marrakech, Morocco, for BBC in 1988. This movie (which partly anticipates events shown in SYRIANA, a far better film) had the potential to be quite good, but it suffers from major quality-control problems. The fault, dear Viewers, lies not in its stars (John Hurt and Imogen Stubbs) but in its script, its editing, and its production values.

Supposedly set in the Middle East, its story-arc appears to be the tragedy of aging ace reporter Granville Jones (Hurt), who loses his young archaeologist lover (Stubbs), either through bad luck or through the villainous actions of the powerful enemies he makes when he reports that the pro-west Arab leader of an oil-rich country was forced to abdicate by his anti-west, fundamentalist son. I say "appears," because the vast number of flashbacks that Hurt's character experiences make the overall chronology of the plot unclear. Furthermore, the nature of the soundtrack is such that large portions of the dialogue cannot be made out. (Captioning would have been a great help, but there are no extra features of any sort on this DVD.) It may well be, however, that the scriptwriter and/or the editor and/or the sound engineer deliberately decided to be "artsy" and leave us hanging in several key respects.

As far as production values are concerned, this DVD is below par in many ways. For one thing, it appears that somebody videotaped the movie while it was running on his or her "telly," and it even appears that the transfer to DVD format was made with a third or fourth generation copy of that videotape. The picture is consistently washed out in regard to colors and often seems blurry as far as focus is concerned. Frequently during this movie a hand-held camera is used inside a vehicle, and either there is a smudge on its lens or there is bad sunlight glare on the vehicle's windshield--or a combination of both--which is more than a bit distracting. There are two problems with the sound: some voices (such as Hurt's) are clear most of the time, while those of many other people are often indistinct; the musical soundtrack that is "mixed" with the dialogue is too loud most of the time. By the way, the music does not really mesh well with the emotional impact or mood of the events on screen. (It often sounds as if part of some uncredited string quintet by Boccherini is being played, which is pleasant enough in its own right the first few times it is heard, but this one theme is vastly overused during the whole film.)

Overall, this movie creates quite a bit of tension and much sympathy for Hurt's character, in respect to both his professional activities and his love affair, and Hurt does a fine job of acting. Stubb's character is clearly a subordinate component of the plot, but she has her shining moments as well--pretty, vivacious, athletic (especially in the scene where she walks flirtatiously on her hands), and strong-willed in a good way. Most of the other actors do fine jobs, too. (Be advised that this film does have about three seconds of nudity during a love scene, so some of you may not want to watch it with your grandmothers in the room.) August 12, 2008

Terrible Production Quality

I'm in a state of almost disbelief as to the poor quality of this DVD. The video is blurry, out of focus, grainy, and the worst I have ever seen on a DVD. There are numerous skips and stops, and I don't think those are due to damage to the DVD. I think that's just a part of the production quality. I've never seen anything like it, except maybe for a home-made VHS video on overly-used tape. The story, itself, was not good enough to influence me to keep watching this mess more than a half hour into it. I just shut it off and wrote it off as a bad purchase. Pew! Stinko. Worthless. I'm flabbergasted. December 24, 2007

IT'S A SHORT FUSE ON THE PERIAN GULF POWER KEG

Showcasing Academy award nominated John Hurt ("Rob Roy", "1984", "midnight Express", "The Elephant Man") as Granville Jones and Sultry beauty Imogen Stubbs ("The Colors, "Sense and Sensibility") as his lover, Deadline impacts as a story torn from today's headlines, and seethes with danger, suspense and high drama, along with an aching love story straight from the heart. September 20, 2003

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