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Staring: Jackie Shroff, Sunny Deol, Sunil Shetty, Akshaye Khanna,
Pooja Bhatt and Tabu
Director: J. P. Dutta
Producer: J. P. Dutta
Music: Anu Malik
Running time: 175 minutes
Format: NTSC
Video: 1.85:1 non-anaphormic
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English
Year: 1997 (cinema), 1998 (DEI/Eros DVD), 1999 (Eros/B4U DVD)
DVD: Double sided single layered (DEI/Eros), Single sided dual
layered (Eros/B4U)
DVD Release by: Digital Entertainment Inc (DEI)/Eros and then re-released
by Eros International/B4U
Synopsis
This is a J. P. Dutta film from end to end - he produced, wrote and directed
Border with memorising results. It's very much a landmark
film in Indian cinema as it's the very few war epic movies made in Indian.
Border in particular focuses on human involvement in a
battle around West Rajhastan at the Longewala Post, during the war between
India and Pakistan in 1971. With an all star cast giving a good performances
and heart capturing music from Anu Malik, Border, went on
to swipe the floor at the Filmfare award in 1998 winning ten awards including
best director, best producer and best music.
There are two versions of the DVD available, one from the pioneering
early days of DEI/Eros and other later re-released under the Eros/B4U
label. First release came from the Eros/DEI partnership and was one the
very first Indian DVD releases and it's a flipper - movie is recorded
on 2 sides of the DVD and has to be manually switched over during the
middle of the movie. Later, Eros/B4U released a single side version of
Border. Both DVD versions are looked at in this review.
Video DEI/Eros
Neither DVD version of Border has great video. The DEI/Eros
version has dark video losing shadow detail and making some scenes very
hard to make out - and they are plenty of night scenes in the movie. The
colour fidelity is good and has crisp bright colours - alas only on certain
scenes where it is well lit. They are notable wear and tear marks on the
DVD picture and often spoiled by dust and speckles throughout. The video
has been transferred at a screen aspect ratio of 1.85:1 - cropping from
the original film ratio of 2.40:1 (and just to rub it in further the movie
starts at the proper screen aspect ratio 2.40:1 during the credit opening
sequence then switches to the snipped version straight after). This wouldn't
be too bad if the 1.85:1 was pan and scanned - sadly it is not - the picture
remains static in the middle totally cropping characters outside of the
frame. The video also suffers from compression and procession artefacts
- but are not too off-putting.
If the DEI version of video is bad - the picture on the Eros/B4U DVD
is absolutely terrible. Something seriously has gone wrong here. It looks
like the source for this DVD transfer is the DEI DVD - we couldn't make
this up! This wouldn't be too bad - if done properly, you should, in theory,
get the DEI version of the DVD but on a single sided DVD. Wrong, what
you in fact get is single side DVD version of very poor DEI DVD translation.
All the dust marks, speckles are still there only the video looks very
Video-CD quality. To get to this 'masterful' look at video you have to
sit through 5 minutes worth of advertisements which cannot be skipped
(unless your DVD player is specially chipped to skip junk like this!).
In general, very poor.
Video rating DEI/Eros: 4/10
Video rating Eros/B4U: 2/10
Audio Eros/B4U
The sound is presented is Dolby Digital 5.1 and is the highlight of both
DVD versions of Border. There are good separations on channels - experience
the explosions and gunfire in the battle scenes. Truly, a marvel to listen.
There are slight signs of distortion on the Eros/B4U version of the DVD
- but having judged the video this was to be expected. In conclusion is
the audio is the saviour of both DVDs and is done a lot better than the
video.
Audio rating DEI/Eros: 7/10
Audio rating Eros/B4U:
6/10
Extras
Yeah right - you can't expect miracles. Zilch on either DVD!
Summary
Both DVDs leave you dissatisfied and disappointed. The DEI version was
one the very first DVD title to be released and shows it age in term of
production quality and medium type used (double sided single layer disc).
The Eros/B4U was released much later and should have been from a new transfer
(instead of a botched up job from the DEI DVD) - its not that Eros/B4U
are incapable of doing this - they have shown with a number a re-released
earlier titles that they can produce spectacular DVD titles - witness
Gupt re-release on DVD from Eros/B4U. Unfortunately, they
didn't do this with a high profile and such a critical acclaimed film
like Border. It's hard to recommend any of these DVD versions,
as they are both poor in comparison to today's DVDs. If you were to get
a copy of Border - then the DEI/Eros would be one to get
even though it's a flipper. Maybe (one day) we'll see an anaphormic rendition
of Border - with DTS sound ;-)
Overall rating DEI/Eros:
5/10
Overall rating Eros/B4U:
4/10
Screen grabs:
DEI/Eros on the left and Eros/B4U on the right.
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