Leaving Las Vegas

Leaving Las Vegas' HD DVD is, like the other Momentum/Studio Canal HD releases, a barebones affair. No extras of any substantive kind- but the movie is so good, and deserves the highest quality audio/video presentation that it's hard to complain.

Video 4/5

This 1080p presentation is encoded in VC-1, and captures the film's unusual look superbly. Shot on 16mm film, the film's grain structure is somewhat more accentuated than other recent high-definition releases. Thankfully Studio Canal have avoided ratcheting up the noise reduction to compensate, ensuring the video transfer looks authentic to its film origins. What delights on this transfer is the clarity of the film to tape transfer, and the colour palette. That rich chrominance of Las Vegas borders on oversaturation, nearly blinding the viewer with reds, yellows and blues. It's splendid video material - not anything that will sell HD Ready televisions, however.

Audio 3.5/5

Yet another DTS HD Master Audio surround track, potentially lossless, if and only if there were decoders on the market or in the HD DVD players for this. The extracted 1.5Mbps "core" DTS track is excellent. Mike Figgis' faultlessly light, sad score and incidental music is presented superbly. Again, its nothing that will shift HD equipment, but perfect for the movie.