Sonatine

If I were reviewing the film alone, I would probably give it five stars, but this release (as well as all the other digital releases from what I can tell) has some major audio issues. Dialogue sounds fine and the music quality is passable, but the sound effects are sub-vhs quality. Half the things in this movie sound like a plane—the ocean sounds like a plane, rain sounds like a plane, even footsteps sound like a plane. My theory is that the sfx are taken from an old English dub for whatever reason, which would explain why the voices are fine and why bg radio sounds are in English. Why Miramax did that, I have no idea... The poor audio doesn’t ruin the movie, thankfully, but it could be a LOT better. The fact that the picture quality is great and the dialogue is fine means that the uploaders probably have access to a higher-quality version of this movie but didn’t take the time to make it digital, which is too bad. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only US/NA release of this movie, so this is what we’re stuck with until a better label gets the rights.