Now that I see it again my tastes have matured and my perception changed. I found this to be what I’m now going to categorize as a "snooze movie", In that it could not hold my attention and was drawn out for a lack of story line. That may sound a little harsh but this has significantly lost my interest over the years. No doubt though that Jodie Foster is still a great actor and as for Richard Gere well he never did anything for me anyway.

The film is based around Jack Sommersby (Richard Gere) who returns from fighting in the American Civil War a changed Man. His friends and family are amazed at his change in personality. He went away an angry man who was reknowned for his coarse and ruthless behavior, and came back an empowered and sensitive man.

But is this really Jack Sommersby? Jacks wife laurel (Jodie Foster) has her doubts along with the rest of the community especially Laurels new fiancé (Bill Pullman) who challenges jack violently on several occasions.

Jack returns to find his once prestigious house and land in an almost ruin. He embarks on a land lease and productive venture that has the Virginian south black and White communities in conflict.

Basically the film is a test of whether this is really jack Sommersby or an impostor who has committed murder.

So How Does This Transfer Hold Up?

VIDEO
This is a reasonably good 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen transfer. Given the age of the film one can expect imperfections.

The Warner logo shot before the film has some amazing wobble to it, could even call it interesting it’s so bad.
There is some loss of shadow detail consistently in indoor low level lighting scenes. Perhaps from the original material rather than the transfer process.
Colour schemes were consistent with the era of the film, but at the same time were often bright and rich in outdoor scenery.
Grain was apparent on many occasions but was not bad enough to be distracting. This was to be expected in many of the barely lit scenes.
There were no MPEG artefacts and very few film artefacts.
Aliasing and shimmering were on occasion a problem, but there were a lot of scenes with consecutive linear images that lend themselves to these problems.

The film was however mostly sharp and clear and these flaws are all minor interference’s.

AUDIO
The Dolby 2.0 audio transfer was also a little disappointing.

The entire track seemed to lack a quality of sound that one expects from DVD. Perhaps this is attributable to the age of the film but even in the early nineties this should have been avoidable.

There was some very limited use of the surround channels for effect. The base channel only had a small groan every now and then.
Dialogue was good but not always easy to understand.
Danny Elfman’s soundtrack was a little lackluster and reminded me of one of those old western movies with a little thoughtless classical stuff every now and then and not a lot of inspirational heart felt music.

Still technically the music was good just not inkeeping with the film so much.

EXTRAS
Well the cover says: Interactive menus and Scene Access.
Sorry but as I have said before these are not features; they are a standard aspect of almost any DVD.
So no marks for extras.

My mum would like this movie. Slow paced nice old country tale. 

If you want some fast paced entertainment then give this one a miss but if you like a slow and mildly sad story then this would be right up your alley.