| The Star Chamber | | Cast : | Michael Douglas, Hal Holbrook | | Director : | Peter Hyams | | Studio : | Fox Home Entertainme | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned | | Released Date : | August 05, 1983 | | DVD Released Date : | February 01, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 02, 2005 | | Summary | AND JUSTICE FOR ALL | Content
 | This 1983 film was one of the first to use vigilante justice with JUDGES as the catalysts. It offers a tragic look at how our judicial system is held captive by its own mechanizations. Michael Douglas plays a judge who is forced to obey the law in cases where technical mishaps or improper protocol allows known criminals to go free. Douglas discovers that his mentor (Hal Holbrook) sits on a panel of nine judges who serve their own method of justice to these kind of criminals. He is asked to join them when one of their members commits suicide. Whether or not this kind of vigilante justice is ethical or whether it merely reduces the judges to the level of their victims forms the core of the movie. Douglas and Holbrook are excellent, but Sharon Gless is wasted in her role as Douglas' wife. Yaphet Kotto is his usual sturdy self in his role as the detective who ultimately helps Douglas bring the judicial bad guys down. The ending is a little overblown, but all in all, STAR CHAMBER is an interesting movie. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 16, 2005 | | Summary | "Our Own Court Of Last Resort" | Content
| Michael Douglas and Hal Holbrook star in 1983's "The Star Chamber", an excellent drama which has Douglas portraying Superior Court Judge "Steven R. Hardin", who, time and time again, is forced to return criminals to the streets due to legal technicalities. Eventually, he can take it no more -- and resorts to joining an exclusive nine-member organization composed of fellow judges -- The "court of last resort" (as Holbrook puts it during the film).
Hardin's internal struggle in dealing with his newly-acquired (and ultra-secretive) "power" is dealt with nicely in the film, with Michael Douglas giving an outstanding performance in this reviewer's opinion.
In fact, everyone in this cast is letter-perfect in their parts here. From Douglas (who was 38 years old when he made this movie) .... to Holbrook .... to Sharon Gless (who plays Michael's wife) .... to Yaphet Kotto (who gives a very good and restrained performance as a police detective).
And the actors that the filmmakers got to play the killers and assorted crooks in this movie will give you the willies by just glancing at them. The two main bad guys in the film are played by Don Calfa and Joe Regalbuto, and both are wholly convincing as all get out, especially Calfa as "Lawrence Monk". This guy's "look" and ever-bulging eyeballs just scream "shady character". He'll give you the creeps right from the get-go. Great casting, IMO.
I also very much like the way members of the police are portrayed in "The Star Chamber". They seem like "real" cops to me in this picture; not phony in any manner -- another first-rate job of casting and characterization.
For baseball fans, there are even a few brief "cameos" made by some major-league baseball players (circa 1982 or very early 1983) when the filmmakers took their cameras to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles to film a scene. The two judges (Douglas and Holbrook) take their wives to a ball game between the hometown Dodgers and Atlanta Braves. During the course of this scene, several different Dodgers' and Braves' players appear on screen -- such as veteran Atlanta knuckleballer Phil Niekro (who was pitching against Los Angeles that night), first baseman Chris Chambliss and catcher Bruce Benedict of the Braves, and then-L.A. stars Dusty Baker and Steve Sax.
About the only humor in the movie comes during this Dodger Stadium scene, with several funny lines of dialogue being spoken, such as Holbrook's character repeatedly referring to various Dodger players as "class acts" ("Baker's a class act"; "That Sax is a class act"; "Come on Guerrero! A class act, that guy").
Holbrook gets in another witticism when he looks around at the crowd in bewilderment and utters: "Why does everybody here bring radios? As if they won't believe what they see until Vin Scully tells them HE saw it too." (LOL.)
Sharon Gless gets in a good line too (after discovering that Dusty Baker is making $800,000 a year, which is, of course, a mere pittance when compared to today's ridiculous sports salaries) -- "Eight hundred thousand DOLLARS? That's four times more than the President of the United States makes."
To which Holbrook's character chimes in with -- "Baker's a better hitter." :-)
This "20th Century Fox" DVD sports a very good Anamorphic Widescreen (2.35:1) version of "The Star Chamber"; plus there's a Full Frame/Pan-and-Scan (1.33:1) edition of the movie on the other side of this dual-sided disc.
The Widescreen version is (naturally, IMO) by far the best way to watch this motion picture -- or any other movie that was originally filmed in a Widescreen format.
A good example of the drastic difference between the far-inferior Pan-and-Scan (1.33:1) format and the intended Widescreen (2.35:1) version of this movie comes in DVD Chapter #13. There's a scene which has Hal Holbrook's character (at his home) getting up to get a drink, while Michael Douglas stands on the far right side of the frame. This nicely-photographed scene, via the proper aspect ratio of 2.35:1 Widescreen, shows Holbrook on the far left side of the screen, while Douglas remains in the shot on the far right.
But if you watch the horrid Pan-&-Scan version of this disc, you'll see only Mr. Holbrook during the above-mentioned portion of the film; while Michael Douglas is completely cut out of the shot (due, of course, to the zooming in and "re-formatting" that is required to blow up a 2.35:1 image to fill up a 1.33:1 TV frame.
There are several well-composed shots in "The Star Chamber" that benefit nicely from the w-i-d-e 2.35:1 composition. Lighting and shadows are also used quite effectively here, with "shafts" of light accentuating the visuals in several parts of the movie. The film is in Color, and the colors are well-rendered and natural-looking on this DVD.
Let's take a look at some more information regarding this DVD-Video product................
>> AUDIO -- Three separate Dolby Digital soundtracks are provided -- English 5.1 Surround; Spanish 2.0 Stereo; and French 2.0 Stereo.
>> SUBTITLES -- In English and in Spanish.
>> MENUS -- Static, non-animated variety of Menus. ... Sub-Menus for "Languages", "Scene Selections", and "Special Features". ... No music utilized.
>> CHAPTER STOPS -- 28 total chapter breaks included.
>> BONUS MATERIAL -- The only supplements are two Trailers. One is a full-length Original Theatrical Trailer for "The Star Chamber"; the other is a shorter "Teaser Trailer" for the film.
>> PAPER ENCLOSURE? -- Yes. There is a two-sided, one-page color insert (with Chapter Index). The front side of this insert, btw, features a different photo than that of the cover art on the DVD's Keep Case. Nice job on the DVD photos, IMO.
>> THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE FOR THE FILM -- August 5, 1983.
>> DVD RELEASE DATE -- February 1, 2005.
>> MPAA FILM RATING -- "R" (For Language and Violent Content).
>> FEATURE RUNNING TIME -- 1 hour, 48 minutes.
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This 1983 "sleeper" has awakened on an excellently-presented DVD edition from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment!
If you currently own the Pan-&-Scan-only VHS version of "The Star Chamber", then toss it out immediately and upgrade to this superior DVD version. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 31, 2005 | | Summary | Great movie finally available on DVD! | Content
| Hard to believe it took so long for this one to be released on DVD! |
| Rating | | | Date | March 01, 2005 | | Summary | A class act finally on DVD | Content
| This is a real "in your face" drama that has been all but forgotten about. Hopefully the rumors of the remake are true.
A couple of key things without rehashing the plot....great dialogue, especially from Hal Holbrook and the other judges. When they were looking to fill a vacancy in their ranks and a name is brought up, they disdainfully tore up the potential nominee...."he's a lightweight....I'm sure he's nice to his cocker-spanial, but that's just not good enough". Great stuff. And when Holbrook finally explains it all to Michael Douglas..."you are depressingly familiar". I love that line.
Yes, there are some weak plot points in spots, but overall this movie presents complex issues without clear answers. You have to ask yourself...what would you do? The Doctor who's little boy was killed says it all....."You don't escape so easily". That's what makes this so rivoting....no black and white.
Go buy it....its time to get your fingernails dirty.
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| Rating | | | Date | May 23, 2004 | | Summary | The only verdict is "guilty," the only sentence is "death!" | Content
| It is often said that one of the cornerstones of our criminal justice system is the concept that it is better to let a hundred guilty men go free than to convict one innocent. But what if you had to live in the community where those hundred guilty murderers and rapists were set free...? Although an imperfect film, I thought it did a good job of being fair to both sides of the argument (just like the film "Magnum Force"), being unusually free of the usual liberal Hollywood bias. The criminal justice system will always be flawed, because human beings are flawed, they still make mistakes even when they try their best. But let's face it, even though the standard is supposed to be "proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt," day after day after day suave defense attorneys bamboozle sheepish jurors into a standard of "beyond the shadow of a doubt." Many defense attorneys often don't try cases -- they try causes. They ask the jury not to render a verdict based on the evidence or the facts of the case at hand, but instead based on how they feel about some social or political issue that they claim is the REAL reason why their client was charged. Time and again, judges, jurors, prosecutors, police and the public are asked to gouge their own eyes out and lobotomize themsleves into ignoring clear evidence of guilt -- even when it proves guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt -- because of some highly unlikely technical interpretation and misapplication of the letter of the law in order to violate its spirit. To many defense lawyers, the term "intellectual honesty" is an oxymoron.... (If you doubt anything in this paragraph, then you've obviously never heard of the OJ Simpson case.) It is easy to understand Michael Douglas' frustrations as a judge. Clearly, the system needs improvements. But by the end of the film it becomes equally clear that Hal Holbrook's changes are not improvements! Erring too far on EITHER side of the equation erodes people's faith in the system, which results in just the sort of breakdown we see in society today. So, now that "The Star Chamber" (and "Magnum Force") has shown us the dangers of the criminal justice system moving too far to the right, when is Hollywood going to show us the dangers of it moving too far to the left...? Don't bother holding your breath -- read the newspaper instead.... |
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