Plot: What’s it about?
In 1984, the world called the Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones took his journey as far down as The Temple of Doom. At that same time, a song by Phil Collins played non-stop on the airwaves. The song was haunting, powerful and shared its title with a 1984 thriller that was a inspired remake of Out of the Past. The film is “Against All Odds”.
Terry Brogan (Jeff Bridges) is a football player being told to look the other way after a takeover of the football team he plays for. Hearing of his financial and professional situation, his clubowner friend Jake Wise (James Woods) has a series of monetary jobs but none seem to satisfy Terry until one involving his girlfriend (Rachel Ward) comes into play. It seems that she’s left her boyfriend injured and has since been in hiding. Terry goes to find her but starts to realize that wherever he goes, danger follows him everywhere.
One of the best scores of any movie in the eighties came from this film. The music playing over the main titles, scored by Michel Columbier and Larry Carlton, is pulse pounding through the exteriors of Mexico as well as the two songs in the middle and at the end. All three are a nice combination of balance of score in the beginning, middle and end.
All players work wonderfully, especially both Jeff Bridges and James Woods and the film moves at a brisk pace without getting tedious or out of control. It’s interesting to note that Jane Greer, who plays a key role, actually was one of the main players in Out of the Past with Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum. It’s also a pleasure to see any movie in the last 20 years with a role minor or major played by Richard Widmark as he brings his own presence to any film that he does.
With a few twists and a steady pace along with a great theme song, Against All Odds is a very intriguing and entertaining piece that keeps you hooked all the way through and is one of the memorable films of the eighties.
Video: How does it look?
Against All Odds is given the Special Edition treatment with a beautifully digitally remastered 1.85:1 transfer. The print comes, unlike most eighties films, without any hints of grain or any video noise. The colors are balanced without oversaturation or bleeding. To my surprise, a great transfer.
Audio: How does it sound?
The sound for the film is a very good track with a good combination of score and dialogue. The score is used on the majority of the channels and the dialogue with the effects are spread around all sound channels nicely with clarity and hardly any muted audio limitations. The disc also has an English 2.0 Surround along with English, Portuguese, Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Thai subtitles.
Supplements: What are the extras?
This title, as said in the Video section, is given the Special Edition treatment and has a decent amount of extras. First there are 2 commentaries. One by director Taylor Hackford and writer Eric Hughes. The other is with Hackford and actors Jeff Bridges and James Woods. Both are quite informative and are both a joy to listen to giving a good backstory on the project on the first track as well as fun input from the two actors on the second track. In listening to that particular track, I kind of wished for Bridges to be part of the commentary track on Tron.
We’re also treated to two music videos. The first is the title track with Phil Collins. The video takes me back to the early days of video as this was one that played quite a bit,as much as it played on the radio at the time, using footage from the film as well as using a stoned headpiece a great deal throughout the video. The other is for Kid Creole and the Coconuts’ “(My Male) Curiosity” and it’s used similarly to the scene in the film highlighting them in the nightclub.
There are also seven deleted scenes w/optional commentary by Taylor Hackford and though they are interesting to see away from the film, it’s understandable to see why they were taken out of the final cut of the film.
Finally, there are cast and crew bios and trailers of this film plus other Jeff Bridges titles such as The Last Picture Show, Starman, and Arlington Road.
In conclusion, I hoped that it could’ve had more nominations than the one for the song but that didn’t take away my enjoyment of this film and this fine addition to the Columbia Special Edition titles.
