Starring: John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito

Cert: 15

Released:21^st March 2005

Chili Palmer (Travolta) is a Miami debt collector who has a passion about films. Life takes a turn for the worse when his boss dies and he is forced to start answering to one of his enemies. A money trail takes Chili to Vegas and then on to Hollywood where he meets B-movie director Harry Zimm (Hackman) and decides the film industry is his new career choice.

            There’s the Miami mob, drug dealers, a bodyguard, an A-list actor, the director, his girlfriend and the widow of a screenwriter all with their own agendas and some of them eager to pull a double cross to get their foot in the door of the next big project.

Elmore Leonard wrote Get Shorty as a satire of Hollywood machinations; comparing the film lifestyle to that of criminals. The screenplay kept that dry and scathing wit so is predominantly dialogue based; every character is given their chance to define themselves through humorous discourse rather than requiring elaborate backstories. This makes them very easy people to empathise with and, with the exclusion of any ‘movie’ action, gives the film a realism that is often missing from crime capers.

            The multi-threaded storylines are easy to follow and a joy to watch as Chili calmly plays one side against another. Amongst all that are a number of great set pieces as the players try to out-verbose each other.

            On top of the brilliant acting are Barry Sonnenfeld’s trademark sweeping visuals and a tremendously chilled soundtrack making Get Shorty cool on every level.

I’ve now got into the habit of displaying a degree of patience when it comes to DVD releases. Too many times have I bought a film and found myself being burned six months down the line by a Special Collector’s Limited Exclusive Art Card Edition release.

            So even though it’s been a few years and the release of Get Shorty probably has more to do with marketing the sequel Be Cool than treating the fans I’m glad I waited. This two disk release is not a disappointment. Let alone that the film is brilliant, Sonnenfeld has supplied an audio commentary that is laden with anecdotes, behind the scenes and script trivia and an insight into his filmmaking process.

            On disk two are half a dozen featurettes which interview the cast, crew, screenwriter and Elmore Leonard on every aspect of the production and, surprisingly, contain very little repetition between them. Then there is a trailer, photo gallery with stills and behind-the-scenes shots, outtakes and Be Cool preview.

            Possibly the hottest addition is a deleted scene starring Ben Stiller as a young director on one of Zimm’s productions and a mini documentary explaining it’s position within the film and the reason for its removal from the final cut.

            Then, if that’s not enough then there are also a number of Easter Eggs revealing bonus amusing snippets from DeVito and Sonnenfeld.

            An excellent film and a fantastic DVD release.