The screenplay steadfastly avoids attempts at significance or character empathy. Subway tells the story of Fred (Lambert), a cool spiky-haired dude who steals some valuable documents and flees to the subways to escape his pursuers. (Over the credits, we're treated to a car chase that careens through the same tunnels as the hair-raising chase in Ronin, which, coincidentally, also stars Jean Reno.) Fred wants money in exchange for the documents so that he can start a band. A gorgeous millionaire's wife (Isabelle Adjani) complicates his plans with romance. A weird, disjointed series of underground adventures follows, as Besson tries his hand at French New Wave. We meet many eccentric characters who don't mean anything to the story. In the end, while Fred's newly assembled band preaches that "guns don't kill people, people kill people," and an out-of-left-field death scene turns into a joke, you'll want to stab your DVD player's Off button.

VIDEO:
Presented in its original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio, enhanced for widescreen TVs, Subway looks good but not great. The image tends toward the soft side, and you'll notice distracting artifacting and shimmering, particularly in scenes that have shifting horizontal lines, such as vents. Still, a nice image for this film's age.

AUDIO:
The Dolby 2.0 audio tracks (the original French and the English dub) are unremarkable. However, the film's eclectic (some might call it chaotic) music comes across cleanly, and fidelity remains strong. Annoyingly, the DVD defaults to the English dub with English subtitles.

EXTRAS:
The disc offers no significant extras, only cast and crew biographies and a few trailers. But you won't find a Subway trailer. Instead, the disc offers three trailers for other Besson films: The Professional, The Messenger, and The Big Blue, all of which are non-anamorphic.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Many people speak fondly of this film's style-over-substance artistry. I would agree that it has virtually none of the latter, but I'd also argue that it has little of the former. Nevertheless, Subway has its fans, and this disc's good image and sound quality will satisfy them.