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Acceptable Risk
Artisan // Unrated // April 23, 2002
List Price: $19.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Movie:
"Acceptable Risk" is one of a certain kind of movies. This would be a member of that genre of film where you find it on cable late one night and as bad as you know it is, you somehow manage to get sucked in. I've never read one of Robin Cook's novels, but given the fact that he's a best-selling author, I would expect that more would be made out of the cinematic versions of his movies than TBS movies-of-the-week like this one.
The film stars Chad Lowe (husband of Hilary Swank) as a doctor who moves in with his wife into a house that was left to her. When the plumbing doesn't work, the two break into the boarded up area of the basement and find a strange fungus that was apparently - according to a flashback which starts the film - from around the Salem witch trials. When the cat goes psychotic after nibbling on some of the stuff, you'd think the characters would have gotten the point that this material may be bad news - of course not.
Tests are done on rats and it apparently makes the little creatures more intelligent. Thinking it could work on people, he tries some of the stuff himself and - no surprise here - loses it. The performances are halfway decent - I will give credit to some of the actors, who are able to make silly and ridiculous lines of dialogue moderately effective rather than unintentionally hilarious. There's some goofy sequences though; the scene where the cat goes nuts is an unintentionally amusing highlight.
Anyone who has had trouble sleeping and turned on the cable box at 2 or 3 in the morning, but that's still not saying a whole lot. While I was a bit interested as the movie started, that quickly faded away as by the 30 minute point it still was taking an awfully long time to get anywhere.
The DVD
VIDEO: The film is presented in 1.33:1 full-frame, as it was originally filmed and presented on TBS. I will say that Artisan has provided a decent presentation; I'd guess that while the picture doesn't look much better than the original broadcast, it does seem a little crisper and more defined than presentations of these sort of cable movies usually appear. Sharpness and detail remained unexceptional but not bad, either.
Slight grain appeared inconsistently, although was seen more frequently in darker sequences. No edge enhancement was apparent and, thankfully, only some slight pixelation was noticed. Print flaws were minimal, as only a couple of specks were visible.
Colors, on the other hand, seemed rather bland, as the film's subdued color palette wasn't very visually interesting and appeared slightly smeared once or twice. A decent transfer and somewhat better treatment than these TV-movies usually get.
SOUND: There wasn't anything really of interest about the stereo soundtrack, which maintained a decent balance between effects, dialogue and music, all of which sounded fairly clear.
MENUS: Bland main menus with no animation.
EXTRAS: Nothing.
Final Thoughts: "Acceptable Risk" could have been a moderately interesting low-budget thriller, but the adapted screenplay isn't very good and the performances are only decent enough to save the dialogue from being unintentionally goofy more often. Artisan's DVD presents the film with decent audio/video, but nothing in the way of supplements. Not recommended.
"Acceptable Risk" is one of a certain kind of movies. This would be a member of that genre of film where you find it on cable late one night and as bad as you know it is, you somehow manage to get sucked in. I've never read one of Robin Cook's novels, but given the fact that he's a best-selling author, I would expect that more would be made out of the cinematic versions of his movies than TBS movies-of-the-week like this one.
The film stars Chad Lowe (husband of Hilary Swank) as a doctor who moves in with his wife into a house that was left to her. When the plumbing doesn't work, the two break into the boarded up area of the basement and find a strange fungus that was apparently - according to a flashback which starts the film - from around the Salem witch trials. When the cat goes psychotic after nibbling on some of the stuff, you'd think the characters would have gotten the point that this material may be bad news - of course not.
Tests are done on rats and it apparently makes the little creatures more intelligent. Thinking it could work on people, he tries some of the stuff himself and - no surprise here - loses it. The performances are halfway decent - I will give credit to some of the actors, who are able to make silly and ridiculous lines of dialogue moderately effective rather than unintentionally hilarious. There's some goofy sequences though; the scene where the cat goes nuts is an unintentionally amusing highlight.
Anyone who has had trouble sleeping and turned on the cable box at 2 or 3 in the morning, but that's still not saying a whole lot. While I was a bit interested as the movie started, that quickly faded away as by the 30 minute point it still was taking an awfully long time to get anywhere.
The DVD
VIDEO: The film is presented in 1.33:1 full-frame, as it was originally filmed and presented on TBS. I will say that Artisan has provided a decent presentation; I'd guess that while the picture doesn't look much better than the original broadcast, it does seem a little crisper and more defined than presentations of these sort of cable movies usually appear. Sharpness and detail remained unexceptional but not bad, either.
Slight grain appeared inconsistently, although was seen more frequently in darker sequences. No edge enhancement was apparent and, thankfully, only some slight pixelation was noticed. Print flaws were minimal, as only a couple of specks were visible.
Colors, on the other hand, seemed rather bland, as the film's subdued color palette wasn't very visually interesting and appeared slightly smeared once or twice. A decent transfer and somewhat better treatment than these TV-movies usually get.
SOUND: There wasn't anything really of interest about the stereo soundtrack, which maintained a decent balance between effects, dialogue and music, all of which sounded fairly clear.
MENUS: Bland main menus with no animation.
EXTRAS: Nothing.
Final Thoughts: "Acceptable Risk" could have been a moderately interesting low-budget thriller, but the adapted screenplay isn't very good and the performances are only decent enough to save the dialogue from being unintentionally goofy more often. Artisan's DVD presents the film with decent audio/video, but nothing in the way of supplements. Not recommended.
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