Product: The Negotiator
Company: Warner Brothers
Review By: Byron Hinson

Aspect Ratio	Regional Information		DVD Disc Details
2.35 : 1 Anamorphic Widescreen	1 : USA	NTSC	Closed Captioning: CC Master format: Film Sides: 1 (SS-RSDL) Chapter stops: 39

Sound:	English	French
	5.1	5.1
Subtitles:

When The Negotiator first came out here in the UK, it was released with very little publicity. This surprised me, especially with two top class actors like Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey starring in it.

The story goes like this: Samuel L. Jackson is Danny Roman, a hot shot police negotiator and the man of the hour in the police department. One day he wakes up to find that he has been set up by the people he called his friends, and now the police are after him. In his panic, he takes control of a building. Knowing all the rules of negotiation, Danny asks for the only negotiator he can trust - Chris Sabian (Kevin Spacey). When the police get itchy trigger fingers and want to go into the building shooting (And do quite a few times), Sabian finds that the only way he can save Danny Roman's life is to go in there and become his partner. Now the police have to deal with both of them..

Out of 9 DVD's I have bought over the past few weeks, this is probably the one I have enjoyed the most. The acting from Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey is excellent, as you would expect. They play off of each others characters superbly. The late J.T. Walsh is also excellent as Terence Niebaum one of the main members of the conspiracy against Roman. The plot kept me guessing throughout and the action scenes were well put together and never interfered with the feel of the movie, the ending also won't disappoint.

The Negotiator DVD is widescreen and is shown in 2.35 : 1 maintaining the aspect ratio shown in the cinema. The picture quality is excellent throughout and the sound is also top quality with clear dialogue never being overpowered by music or background sounds. Now onto the special features. The negotiator comes with a couple of documentaries, one that profiles real-life police negotiators and the other a behind-the-scenes documentary. The two documentaries aren't bad, but I would have liked to have seen a few interviews with some of the actors involved on the movie too.

Overall I have to recommend this DVD for the simple reason that the story, acting and action is excellent. The only slight disappointment I have with the whole DVD disc is that I felt it lacked more special features, and that the ones that were on the DVD were not long enough. I would also have liked to have seen both Widescreen and Pan & Scan on one disc, I know it's asking a lot, but a number of new DVD users will still like to see Full Screen DVD video.

"The Negotiator" - DVD Features

• Interactive menus
• Scene access
• "The 11th Hour", a documentary profiling real-life police negotiators
• Chicago on-location behind-the-scenes documentary
• Production notes
• Five theatrical trailers.

PC Setup

• Pentium II 450
• Windows 98
• 128 Meg SD-Ram
• Voodoo 2 - 8mb
• SoundBlaster Live Value
• DVD-ROM - 32x
• XingDVD 2.0.3 and ATI DVD Player 3.0
• 17" LG Electronics Monitor
• ATI 8mb XPert AGP Graphics Card