Mrs. Soffel is one of those frustrating human dramas that has plenty of implied emotion and torment but virtually no properly developed characters to bolster it all. As a result, when the end credits roll, you're left exhausted by the film's hollow passion and long, ponderous sections that are meant to convey suffering but are only tedious.

The scene is Pittsburgh, 1901. Ed and Jack Biddle (Mel Gibson and Matthew Modine) have been convicted of first-degree murder and are confined to neighboring prison cells, awaiting death by hanging. Kindly Kate Soffel (Diane Keaton), wife of the warden and Biblical comforter, pays them sympathetic visits, intoning appropriate psalms and flinging flowers through their bars. Inevitably, she falls head-over-heels for handsome, blue-eyed Ed, that charismatic, almost-Aussie-accented poet-in-the-making. Tired of her loving, faithful husband and three beautiful children, she determines to aid the Biddles in a daring escape and flee with them across the countryside toward Canada.

Softer hearts than mine might find emotion aplenty buried inside this tale, but I never found any real motivations or personalities to latch on to. I wanted to know why Mrs. Soffel was so unhappy that she was willing to abandon her entire life. I wanted to know why she thought the Biddles might not be the murderous savages they were accused of being. I wanted to know why I was supposed to care about a burgeoning love affair when the lovers' innermost thoughts and emotions are opaque at best.

Mrs. Soffel is a wearisome film whose parts never add up to the whole that they should. It feels as if 30 minutes worth of terribly vital scenes have been chopped out, and in their place have been plugged slow-moving scenes of characters reacting to developments in the cut scenes.

Warner presents Mrs. Soffel in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. The transfer looks better that I expected it to look. Detail is impressive, considering the film's age. However, there is considerable grain and mosquito noise, particularly on backgrounds and wide-open vistas. (The much-lauded cinematography suffers in this respect.) The film is generally dark, with an antique, almost sepiatone quality, but during its brighter scenes, detail fares best. A few scenes—all of them with characters against snow-white backgrounds—exhibited terrible edge enhancement. In other scenes, that tell-tale halo effect was nowhere to be found. The film's muted color palette comes across accurately. Overall, a satisfactory image.

The DVD offers only an English Dolby 2.0 track, and sound is confined to the screen. Fidelity suffers slightly, particularly at the high end. This isn't a film that demands active surround sound, but a wider stereo image would have been nice. You also get a French mono track.

Warner has blessed us with capsule biographies of Keaton, Gibson, and director Armstrong, and has included a very grainy, anamorphically enhanced trailer.

This is a movie that doesn't make much of an impression. There's a hollowness at its center that will leave you wondering whether key scenes are missing. On the plus side, the transfer is surprisingly acceptable.