The back of the keepcase for HBO's latest Chris Rock DVD - Chris Rock: Never Scared - claims that stand up has never been so dangerous. I'm not entirely sure how stand up comedy can be dangerous. Incendiary or poignant maybe, I could buy that. It sure has the ability to be offensive at times. But dangerous? I think that's a little extreme. Either way, that doesn't change the fact that Chris Rock is one of the best in the business and this DVD is further proof of that fact that he is indeed a funny guy regardless of the topic at hand.

While the performance starts off in typical Chris Rock fashion, poking fun at rap music with plenty of street style jargon and dirty talk, it soon moves on into a more topical and dare I say it mature light. Rock shows he's not just the pissed off black man he's portrayed so well and so often but that he has a social conscience as well. He's also apparently fed up enough with some of the actions that the current administration has taken to work it quite deeply into his routine this time out. While he never gets political in the way that Michael Moore or Al Franken have, for a stand up comedy performance, he lets loose with his views but does so in a way that regardless of your political persuasion (though it might help a little bit if you're leaning maybe ever so slightly towards the left…) you should be able to laugh about it and then maybe later, after it's sunk in a bit, think about it on your own.

As is the norm for Rock, he shows that there is no such thing as a sacred cow in his world – he hits topics as volatile as the war in Iraq to abortion to racism and the crowd eats it up because he's able to bring to light the ridiculousness of the polar extremes that some people go to when it comes to these subjects. He doesn't beat you over the head with his views and he doesn't go on fact spewing rampages, but he does try to enlighten the layman to maybe put a little more thought into what they do when they vote, and when they spend their money.

Politics aside, Rock is as animated as ever before here, getting right into some of his more perverse rap routines – dancing around on stage and acting out the lyrics in his own hyper kinetic way. His performance is as much physical as it is lyrical or mental. This DVD does a nice job of capturing his crazed stage presence by shooting his act from a few different angles and using decent lighting throughout. They've done a very professional job of capturing his effects on the live audience as well, effectively cutting from Rock on stage to some varied reactions from all manner of people congregated in the audience.

Video:

HBO hits this one out of the park in the visuals department with a razor sharp image, near perfect color reproduction, and nary a compression artifact in sight. There is the odd spot of edge enhancement that creeps up here and there but it's so slight that you probably won't notice it much unless you're intentionally looking to find it. There's no print damage to speak of and the fullframe image is clean and clear from start to finish. The only real complaint is that sometimes there's some shimmering from the blues used in the background on the stage.