Review of Heaven`s Prisoners

Introduction

This DTV effort is a tale of a couple out on their boat in Louisiana who witness a plane crash land in the water. Dave Robicheaux (Baldwin) dives in to see if there are any survivors, and rescues a little girl who wasn’t supposed to be on the plane. Robicheaux, a retired cop, starts doing some detective work and opens up a Pandora’s Box of trouble for him and his family as he gets involved with the local mafia.

And it just doesn’t work! With a running time of just under 2 hours this is a laborious journey between one chase scene and the next. A lot of flab needs to be cut out of a story that just takes too long and fails to keep the interest alive. All the characters fail to flesh out their parts and seem to be cruising through this movie to pick up the paycheque – the exception to this is a very sultry and devious Teri Hatcher who uses her good looks and steely edged charm to manipulate the men around her.

The ending is also poor; there are no real resolutions to what has happened and the characters have failed to develop in any way – good or bad. Rent this out if you’re desperate otherwise leave well alone.

Video

Picture
The picture contained on the disk is 4:3, and looks like it has been taken from a 1.85:1 transfer. The unimaginative camerawork works in its favour in this case as all characters are centrally placed in the frame and there is little or no evidence of pan and scan.

The picture quality is OK. It doesn’t have the high production values of many of today’s films so seems to have the same feel to it as an episode of Friends or Dawson’s Creek – so not bad, but not breathtaking either. The Louisiana landscapes seem a little flat and lifeless, maybe that’s how they really are, but this DVD doesn’t show off their best side. Everything is clearly visible however, shadow details are good, and this is necessary for some of the night scenes depicted in the film.

Audio

Only a stereo offering is included in the disk. One look at the end credits show that this was recorded in Dolby and SDDS – an eight-track format for movie theatres. So why not include a Dolby Digital version here? As a pro-logic offering the film is mainly dialogue focussed and offers little in the way of rear speaker action. The stereo pair awake whenever we are presented with an action scene, and your sub will get a little workout from time to time - nothing here to stir the soul though.

Features

The scant extras are also of little note and really add nothing to the film itself. Firstly there is a featurette, which merely acts as an extended trailer. Alec Baldwin states his reasons for working on the film as wanting to work in Louisiana - no mention of the script or director here, and it screams out to me that he was in it for the money.

Secondly the theatrical trailer – one that fails to excite.

Interviews with cast and crew take the form of questions that you select, and the actor’s answer that question. It is done similarly to the one in Snatch, but with the added disadvantage that you have to actually select each question to hear the answer, so it gets very tedious with the remote.

Finally there is a behind the scenes featurette that shows footage of the ‘plane crash’ scene at the start of the film for about 10 minutes. Again, it is just not that interesting.

Conclusion

This DVD fails to inspire on every single level. The translation from the novel just didn’t work, the director has tried to pack too much of the story in, and some severe cutting is desperately needed to give this film a sense of pace and urgency. Instead it lazily draws its conclusion after a series of fight scenes and chase sequences which fail to fire the blood. The picture and sound aspects of the DVD do little to enhance a recommendation, why a cropped print and a stereo soundtrack has been included here is a mystery. Finally the extra features are not worth shouting about. Please leave this godawful DVD on the shelf, you ain’t missing a thing!