Plot: What’s it about?
“Making movies can be murder”. That’s the real tagline to this film. The Player is probably one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the 1990’s. And I’m not counting movies that their commercials say “One of the best movies of the year”. Robert Altman has truly put together a fine movie. What’s so great about it, is that it actually mocks the whole Hollywood scene.
The cast, which in all probably has about 50 people with speaking parts (all famous actors, nonetheless) is headed by Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Whoopi Goldberg, Fred Ward and Peter Gallagher. Robbins plays an arrogant film executive who is involved in a murder. He accidentally kills a man who he thinks is sending him death threats. He then finds out it was the wrong person.
Ward plays the head of security who is “in charge” of dealing with the situation. Goldberg and Lyle Lovett are cops…it goes on. Anyhow, in the midst of all this chaos, Griffin is still trying to do his job–make movies!
It’s really hard to touch on all the levels this film represents, I’ve watched it about 5 times and keep finding new things. It’s a movie within a movie within a movie…If nothing else, watch it for the first scene alone. My film teacher made us watch that thing about 50 times!
Video: How does it look?
One of New Line’s early “Platinum Series” titles. It is 16:9 enhanced and the picture looks absolutely great. The images are sharp and colors nice, everything we’ve come to expect from anamorphic enhancement.
Audio: How does it sound?
A Dolby Digital 5.1 track is used, mainly a lot of bass to build suspense. It works. Mainly a dialogue driven movie, though. A few surround effects do add the overall joy of this movie.
Supplements: What are the extras?
New Line amazes me (they’re owned by Warner), they put out Special Edition titles for nearly half of what companies like Dreamworks and Universal do. The Player, in addition to being a great movie, has deleted scenes, audio commentary, cast bios (not your avearge cast bios either, cast bios for most of the stars who had cameos in the film) and much more. You get a great movie with tons of extras for a great price. How’s that for a happy ending? (You’ll understand once you see the movie)
