Release Date: Feb 10, 2004 Region: 1 Runtime: 121 mins Studio: New Line Home Entertainment Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 [CC] ENGLISH: Dolby Digital Surround [CC]
Video:
Widescreen 2.35:1 Color (Anamorphic)
Subtitles: [None] Packaging: Keep Case Rating: R Features:
Documentary: 15 Minutes Of TrueTabloid Stars Documentary: Does Crime Pay? Fact Track - Trivia Subtitle Track with Direct Access to Additional Features Feature-Length Audio Commentary with Director John Herzfeld Deleted Scenes with Director Commentary "Oleg's Videos" - Video Footage Captured from the Actor's Perspective God Lives Underwater Music Video: "Fame" Original Theatrical Trailer DVD-ROM Features: Script-To-Screen Access to the Film Link To Original Website Exclusive Access To On-Line Infinifilm Features
Fifteen Minutes partners Robert De Niro and Saving Private Ryan's Edward Burns in a thriller satire on America's "reality TV" industry. De Niro plays celebrity detective Eddie Fleming, who must reluctantly work with arson investigator Jordy Warsaw (Burns) when a grisly fire is discovered to conceal a murder. This is the work of Emil (Karel Roden) and Oleg (Oleg Taktarov), East European psychos bent on a maniacal spree of killings. All of these are videotaped by Emil, who renames himself after his hero Frank Capra, in a perverse tribute to the US of A, where "no one is responsible for what they do!". Soon the duo decide to sell their footage to Kelsey Grammer's creepily shameless frontline TV journalist. As a pair of loons whose scariness is just the right side of cardboard villainy, Roden and Taktarov steal the movie as well as their camcorder. However, the central theme of voyeurism and video murder was dealt with far more effectively in the 1992 Belgian movie Man Bites Dog and, while the action tears along in explosive fashion, it does so at the expense of both plausibility and the anti-media satire, which seems hitched crudely onto the bumper of what is essentially a satisfying but conventional blockbuster thriller. --David Stubbs