Herb Kane
Screenwriter
- Joined
- May 7, 2001
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Pink Cadillac
Studio: Warner Brothers
Year: 1989
Rated: PG-13
Film Length: 121 Mins.
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Enhanced Widescreen
Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Thai & Korean
The Feature:
In the action comedy Pink Cadillac, Tommy Nowak (Clint Eastwood) plays a resourceful skip tracer who always gets his man. If you skip bail, Nowak will hunt you down and take you back. There’s nothing personal about it. He’s just doing the job he loves. The role is a surprising one and one you wouldn’t expect to see the superstar playing.
Complications set in when Nowak is assigned to capture Lou Ann McGuinn (Bernadette Peters), a spirited blond fugitive on the lam with her baby. Only problem is, he’s not the only one looking for Lou Ann. When McGuinn fled, she took off in her husbands prized Pink Cadillac, which, unbeknownst to her, contains a quarter of a million dollars.
McGuinn is the stereotypical pretty blonde, who was apparently attracted to the loser type, and whose life didn’t quite turn out the way she had planned. With the flashing lights of Reno as the backdrop, Nowak searches for and soon locates his quarry. However, his sympathetic side shows through, and he decides to take her to see her baby before he runs her in. Unfortunately, the cretin she’s married to beats them to the baby and decides to use the baby as leverage to get the money and the car back.
Lou Ann’s ex-con husband belongs to the “Birthright”, a bunch of redneck white supremacists (who resemble a bunch of cast extra rejects from the movie Deliverance and who are laughable, at best) who were planning on using the money to buy weapons. Alex (played by Michael Des Barres who does his best at an attempt to impersonate tough guy Alec Baldwin’s voice – without little success) is the Birthright leader and assigns a couple of miscreants from the group to search out Nowak & McGuinn in an attempt to track down the missing cash.
Now the chase is on…
Video:
When I watch a movie (particularly for the purpose of a review) I would almost prefer the video to be fantastic all the way through or terrible all the way through. This is another example of inconsistency. The first 6 minutes of the movie looked terrible. It was littered with grain and compression artifacts and some slight mosquito noise. As the movie progressed, so did the video, albeit, not to perfection. Colors for the most part looked vibrant and nicely saturated. Skin tones however, had a reddish tint to them (with the exception of Peters' alabaster skin tone which looked perfectly WHITE…). Black levels were satisfactory.
Detail was for the most part very sharp. Grain was present being heavier in some areas than others. There were many beautiful outdoor scenes with picturesque mountain backdrops that were drop-dead gorgeous. They certainly had a 3-D film like quality about them. However, it seemed as though for every 3 or 4 scenes that looked beautiful, the 5th one would come along and look terrible.
Hmmm…. Average.
Audio:
The DD 5.1 audio track is a rather plain offering. What is delivered is acceptable – no more, no less. Dialogue is clear and always intelligible. Throughout the many action scenes and fights and yes, even a few explosions, the overall dynamic presentation was, well… just average. There was a fair amount of music throughout the movie which sounded good (well, as good as country music can sound, right?) and some acoustical guitar accompaniment which sounded open and airy. As for the surround use, it was disappointing. Other than a thunderstorm and the odd rumble effect, they weren’t used to their potential – and could have been in this film. LFE was virtually non existent.
At 73:05 and 76:20, I noticed a slight lip synch problem which didn’t last more than a few seconds and was hardly noticeable or bothersome.
Overall… average at best.
Special Features:
Not much in the way of Special Features. There is a Cast & Crew page which feature the main characters and their roles in the movie. There is a link when clicking on Clint Eastwood’s name which outlines a 4-5 page filmography highlighting the actor’s successful career.
Also included is the feature’s Theatrical Trailer which is rather grainy.
Final Thoughts:
Throughout his successful career, Clint Eastwood has had many “finest hours”, unfortunately Pink Cadillac isn’t one of them. That is not to say I didn’t find the movie entertaining, I did. It just didn’t leave me captivated. I’ll also add that it was somewhat refreshing seeing Eastwood portraying a character different from the ones we’re so used to seeing him play. Hey, seeing Clint in a gold lamé suit jacket with his hair gelled back was almost worth the price of admission alone…
Unfortunately, this disc is mediocre at best. The special features are sparse, the A/V presentations are average at best and the movie… oh yeah! Well, it’s entertaining…
Released: September 2nd, 2003
Nice review.
