Review of Shooting Fish

Introduction

Until very recently it would have been fair to say that this low budget, part Arts Council of England funded film was the biggest thing that the three leads (Dan Futterman, Stuart Townsend, Kate Beckinsale) have appeared in. Of course Kate Beckinsale is now making the headlines for her part in this summer`s blockbuster, Pearl Harbour (I refuse to spell it without the U!)

I think that this film still remains the highlight for Futterman and Townsend, as neither have gone on to bigger, more successful projects as yet. There`s plenty of British TV talent on show here too, including Arabella Weir, Annette Crosbie, Nickolas Grace and Phyllis Logan.

I won`t go into too much plot detail, suffice to say that our leads are "Robin Hoods for the 1990s", scamming rich people and making money, whilst spending as little as possible. This film follows their antics.

Video

An excellent anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer is on show here. I didn`t detect any artefacting, and there was hardly any print damage, with only the odd minor speckle here and there. Despite waiting longer for this disc, it scores a victory over the region one disc which is not anamorphic. The sleeve rather unhelpfully describes the transfer as "Letterbox: ratio 16:9".

There are some nice locations used here (they shot over 40 locations for the film) as well as a great studio set which makes living inside one of those large "gas towers" look like a very tempting prospect indeed.

Audio

Unfortunately, this disc only contains a DD2.0 soundtrack. It sounds reasonable enough when played back in Pro Logic mode, and there is some good stereo separation, but this film was crying out for a DD5.1 remix, if only for all of the great music used in it. There aren`t lots of action set-pieces or things of that nature, but the music deserved more. Dialogue is clear and audible at all times (just as well, as there are no subtitles on the disc - this is obviously bad news for those that need them though!)

A great soundtrack really places this film in the 1996/7 period, with contributions from Space, Dubstar, The Bluetones, The Divine Comedy and The Supernaturals. There are also some older tracks which fit in well too (Do You Know The Way To San Jose and What The World Needs Now Is Love).

Features

Extras wise this disc beats region one again, as we do get a brief selection of them. These include a short featurette (5 minutes), 10 minutes of soundbites (interview clips with questions on screen and cast and crew answering the questions), B-Roll footage (5 minutes of someone standing on set with a camcorder whilst some filming occurs) and also a brief piece called "Actor`s Research" which is quite amusing (but I`m not going to spoil it by telling you what it`s about).

There is some repetition in the extra features, and there are only perhaps 15 minutes of real extra material. This does seem rather too little. Nice to see some effort put in, but it would have been much nicer to see more effort and more material, even for a low budget film like this.

Conclusion

A very enjoyable and very British film. I missed this one in the cinema (although I remember wanting to go and see it at the time), and am glad that I`ve had the chance to watch it on DVD, after catching it on TV a while ago. It`s entertaining, amusing, clever and obvious all at the same time. There are some rather unbelievable bits on the way, but it`s not supposed to be gritty realism, it`s supposed to be some light-hearted fun. And it does that task well, with the odd lull now and again.

Good fun, and very definitely worth a rental if you missed it first time around. For those looking to buy, it`s the best version of the film available as I`m led to believe that the region one version has had scenes cut, and there is currently no region four version. We even get the bonus of some brief extras on our disc. An RRP of 19.99 is a bit steep, but you`ll pick it up cheaper if you hunt around.