The Code also benefits from some more-than-half-way decent direction by Mimi Leder, who also brought us Deep Impact, Pay It Forward, and The Peacemaker. She also worked on (Spawn Of The) Slithis and A*P*E in the '70s, giving her some much-needed brownie points with we retro B-Horror film buffs.
The Code makes its way to DVD and Blu-ray in the U.S. courtesy First Look Studios in a 2.35:1 widescreen presentation with anamorphic enhancement. The image comes through quite well, with not a whole lot of grain present and a well-balanced color system. Audio-wise, the DVD carries a more-than-adequate English 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround and a 2-Channel English track (which isn’t listed on the box). Some very large and obtrusive optional English SDH subtitles are included, as are some (less-distracting) Spanish ones.
Apart from a few trailers for other First Look releases, the only bonus item here is a god-awful preview for The Code. The trailer — in which the music drowns out the dialogue — is very poorly constructed and will undoubtedly put off just about any potential viewer. Apparently, the editors of the preview couldn’t decide what the hell the movie was called (some cheapo video credits display The Code, while the final still (although the writing is very tiny) reveals the name to be Thick As Thieves — make up your mind already!).
Frankly, I’m uncertain whether they were trying to win or lose money with this release: the artwork is very generic-looking; the film was hyped with a confusing TellX enhancement (available only on the Best Buy release of the film); and there was that god-awful preview to boot. I‘m sorry, even a low-budget film like this deserves better than that — especially with stars of this caliber (has-been or otherwise). And, I didn’t think it was that bad of a film, either.
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