Plot: What’s it about?
Sometime in the mid 90’s, Tom Cruise began taking even more time than usual to pick his parts. He lobbied for parts in “The Firm” and “A Few Good Men” and perhaps we all remember his “blond hair” stage that was most closely associated with this movie. Anne Rice had written the book that this movie was adapted from in 1976, and it has since become somewhat of a cult hit. Her audience, which consists largely of women and homosexuals, has a huge following and it was because of the size of her audience that this movie was such a hit. Of course having Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas in one movie tends to make the ladies happy…While Brad Pitt actually has more screen time than Cruise, it’s clearly a Tom Cuise movie and Banderas makes little more than a cameo. Still, it’s a great retelling of the book that stays clsoely to it. Brad Pitt, not quite the superstar he is now, gives one of his best performances, though it was criticized for being to low-key. What people don’t realize is that he basically played the character of Louis to a tee, in the book he was basically a low key whiner, who was never satisfied with being a vampire. Still, Interview with the Vampire is a very stylistic, almost romantic piece of work and Neil Jordan did a great adaption of it to the screen.
Interview With the Vampire covers such a broad period of time, yet it “starts” back in the 18th century. We meet the main character, Lestat (Tom Cruise) who is always on the prowl for some blood. A farmer who has lost his wife and child in birth (very common at the time) gathers the attention of Lestat and has a deathwish, but unknown to Louis (Brad Pitt, the farmer), he will get more than he bargained for. Lestat, over the course of a day, turns Louis into a vampire but doesn’t really leave him much of a choice in the matter. It seems that Louise would have been happier dead. As the two become more of a duo, minginling about in the upper crust of New Orleans society, killing debutants and hookers, we become more and more aware of Louis’ uphappiness. You see, the whole story is told through Louis’ eyes as a narrator. Christian Slater plays an interviewer in 1976 who has spied on Louis to get an interview (hence the title of the movie). And the whole story is the retelling of Louis’ adventures from the past two hundred years. Along the way we meet a very young Claudia (Kirsten Dunst, who looks like a little kid compared to what she looks like now, a mere 6 years later) and the three are what comes closest to a family.
While Lestat is content to hunt in society and kill two or three a night merely for the “sport” of it, Louis is on a quest to find others like him, he hopes that Claudia, his daughter for all intensive purposes will accompany him but it turns out that she’s inherited the killer instinct along with Lestat. Through thick and thin, the two (Claudia and Louis) slowly become tired of Lestat’s anticts and do their best to kill him, and to their knowledge they do. This leads the two to Europe, where they scour almost every little town and country to find more like themselves, and eventually do in Paris. This is where we meet Antonio Banderas’ character, Armand. After rejoicing that they have finally found others who share in their way of life, they quickly discover that all is not well in the state of Denmark (ok, France)…
Let me preface the conclusion by saying that this movie (book) is the beginning in what is Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Chronicles”. While a sequal is not in the works that I know of, let’s just say that the series does concentrate on Lestat’s character (who eventually becomes a rock star in the late 70’s). All in all, Interview With the Vampire has not only become as much a cult hit, but also a commercia hit as well (i.e. Tom Cruise + Brad Pitt = $$).
Video: How does it look?
This is the second incarnation of “Interview With the Vampire”, the first being one of the first DVD’s out there. This version looks spectacular and is an improvement over the previous version which was one of the highly popular “flipper” (Double sided, single layered) discs. The colors are great, especially considering how much of a dark movie this is (c’mon, vampires are synonymous with the night). While not the best I’ve seen, a very clear and sharp picture that doesn’t suffer the horrors of compression loss or artifacting.
Audio: How does it sound?
This is one of Warner’s new wave titles that has the added benefit of a DTS soundtrack, though Warner doesn’t really choose to promote this feature (though I think it’s the best on the disc). While the DTS sounds almost as good as it does in the theater, the Dolby Digital version isn’t as bad as it’s far superior counterpart would make it sound. Both ranges are very dynamic, but as usual the DTS wins out big time over the DD version. Either wasy you go, you won’t be disappointed, though the DD version is the same used by the Laserdisc which came out five years ago and the DTS is brand new (which would you choose)?
Supplements: What are the extras?
Perhaps the best thing aside from the DTS soundtrack and the dual layering of the disc is the fact this this is basically a special edition. A feature length commentary by Neil Jordan is very interesting and clears up a lot of questions that you might have about anything and everything in regards to the film. Also included is a behind the scenes documentary and some cast and crew interviews. The ones with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are older, while the ones with Antonio Banderas and Kirsten Dunst are relatively new (Dunst looks her age and Banderas has his Caesar haircut). All in all it’s a good disc that you should replace your old one with immediately.
