Shaking off the poster-driven pretense of a "summer action movie," home video allows Frank Oz's The Score to finally come into its own as a riveting, meticulously-plotted "heist" film that stays closer to the spirit of Hitchcock than anything Brian De Palma has ever put to screen. Starring what is arguably today's three greatest working actors -- Brando, De Niro, and Edward Norton, the only one of the three whose name is not yet iconic -- the film takes an aging plotline (an international thief who is convinced to pull just one more heist before retiring) and turns it into one of the most suspenseful and well-crafted movies in years.

It often comes as a surprise that Brando and De Niro have never worked together in a film, although both won Oscars for their respective portrayals of Don Vito Corleone in the first two Godfather films. The potential fireworks generated should these two actors share a stage were such that director Oz reportedly had eight cameras simultaneously running during a key sequence where the two actors effectively performed for the first time together (some of this film appears in the supplemental section).  It was the pairing of these two actors that provided the impetus for most of the $71 million that it earned in the U.S. during its three-month run.

The high points are the dark ten-minute opening sequence with De Niro's character breaking into a safe during a party at an estate, and the 35-minute finale detailing the titular score in a step-by-step sequence that combines the cool logic of Kubrick's The Killing with Hitchcock's use of the language of film to build suspense.

From an acting standpoint, there are very few working actors today who could be hold their own against this pair; the short list would probably include Pacino, Nicholson, F. Murray Abraham -- and Edward Norton. The result is practically an actor's-studio-in-a-can, and for those who can tolerate a procedural character-driven film (one that is generally slower than the viewer might expect, especially during the "summer movie season" in which the film was released theatrically), The Score stands among the year's best.

Film Synopsis: When expert safecracker Nick Wells (DeNiro) decides it might be time to settle down with his girlfriend Diane (Oscar®-nominee Angela Bassett) and stick to his legitimate business, running a jazz nightclub in Montreal, his friend and partner Max (Brando) has other plans. Heavily in debt to a crime boss, Max needs Nick to pull one last heist: help novice thief Jack Teller (Norton) steal a scepter worth $30 million form the House of Customs. Tempted by the $6 million payday, Nick reluctantly agrees to do the job. But what starts out as a safe bet turns into a high risk gamble when a clash of egos threatens to bring them all down.

Technical

Video:	Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1
Audio:	ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 ENGLISH: Dolby Surround 2.0 FRENCH: Dolby Digital Surround
Subtitles:	English, Closed Captions
Chapters:	15

The wide 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer is somewhat disappointing. The film was murky in the original theatrical run, so some enhancement was evidently performed on it for the video; the results, however, give the film a high-contrast (yet consistently dark) image, with the contrast causing edge-enhancement fringes to appear on sharply-limned objects. Brightly-lit scenes are clean and color is correct throughout, but with some adjustment of your TV picture most shadow detail appears lost -- unfortunate in a film of this type.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is very good, although little use is made of the surround channels.

Supplements

• Feature-length commentary by director Frank Oz and director of photography Rob Hahn
• Additional scenes:
  • Job acceptance (three alternate takes)
  • Alternate coffee shop scene
  • Alternate "City Home" take
• Making of The Score (12:35) -- featurette
• Theatrical trailer

Once the listener gets over listening to Frank Oz and hearing Miss Piggy, the audio commentary becomes one of the best put onto DVD this year. Oz hits the perfect mix of background and technical information, and fairly consistently tells us what we want to know when we want it -- including details on the acting chemistry between the three male leads, top method actors from each of three generations. Consistently fascinating, and one of the few director commentaries that has repeatability.

Oz talks at length about the acting chemistry between Brando, De Niro and Norton, and a welcome addition to the disc is a set of three alternate scenes. The job acceptance scene is perhaps the most fascinating, as we're treated to three alternate takes (plus, of course, the final version in the film proper) of what amounts to improvisation -- and we suggest that you play each several times, concentrating exclusively on one actor at a time. They are amazing.

The making-of featurette amounts to little more than an extended movie trailer, puffed out with some sound bytes that must have been signed off by committee.