Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4187 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-01-10
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: Box set, Dubbed, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Dutch, Spanish
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 992 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
It has not taken long for Without a Trace to emerge from the shadows of CSI and become a ratings force in its own right. Jerry Bruckheimer produced both series, and both feature the-face-is-familiar character actors with extensive and diverse resumes who have been catapulted to primetime stardom. Jack Malone, head of a crack FBI missing persons unit, is the Australian-born Anthony LaPaglia's breakout role after years of portraying enough Italian mobsters and criminals to populate a season of The Sopranos. LaPaglia was a surprise Golden Globe Award-winner for this inaugural season. Without a Trace is instantly arresting. "The clock is ticking" in each episode, as Malone and company race against time to find a missing person. "After 48 hours," Malone explains to the rookie member of the team in the series pilot, "they're gone." To solve each baffling case, Malone and fellow agents Samantha Spade (Poppy Montgomery), Vivian Johnson (Marianne Jean-Baptiste of Secrets and Lies), Danny Taylor (Enrique Murciano), and new guy Martin Fitzgerald (Eric Close), must work from the inside out. "Once we find out who she is," Malone says of one victim, "odds are we'll find out where she is."

Among the inaugural season's most wrenching episodes are "Between the Cracks" and "Hang On to Me," both featuring Charles Dutton in his Emmy Award-winning performance as a father whose son has been missing for five years. The powerful season finale, "Fallout," presented in this four-disc set in a "creator's cut," concerns a man who lost his wife in the 9/11 attacks. The riveting episodes mostly stand alone, but some cases do return to haunt Malone, as witness "In Extremis," a case that ends tragically and leads to an internal investigation that threatens to subvert the close-knit unit in the episode. "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?" Sharp writing, authentic procedurals, taut direction, and effective use of music make Without a Tracea series worth finding on DVD. --Donald Liebenson

Synopsis
Executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer's award-winning television series WITHOUT A TRACE follows the FBI's Missing Persons Unit as they investigate individual disappearances in New York City. Led by senior agent Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia), the special task force utilises psychological profiling to reconstruct a timeline of the missing person's last day and determine the cause as either kidnapping, murder, suicide, or runaway. With a topnotch cast that includes Poppy Montgomery, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Enrique Murciano, and Eric Close, Bruckheimer's suspenseful crime drama garnered two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for LaPaglia as Best Actor in a Dramatic Series--all in its first year. This 4-volume box set includes all 22 episodes of that thrilling first season.

Customer Reviews

Wish it had sunk without a trace...
I seem to be in the minority here, but I bought this DVD after reading previous reviews and was really disappointed. I find the storylines to be far too contrived and I just don't think it works. Maybe later series improve but this first one didn't impress me at all. The main characters are very artificial and the way the stories are developed are far too obvious and the 'flashback' style used is just plain annoying. If you like great drama series such as 'Spooks' and 'Murder One', then you'll not like this.

Excellent start to an excellent series...!
I have been watching Without a Trace for some time on TV ... having never seen the pilot or the 1st few episodes...Its good to see how it all started gave insight into the missing background...you can tell its a pilot though!!!

Brilliant and additictive
I really recommend this to anyone I was addicted from the first episode so recently decided to buy the DVD, which doesn't disappoint. The storylines are really addictive - as you follow five FBI agents in a special Missing Persons unit that beleives they only have 48 hours to find the missing person before they are "lost" as agent Malone, who heads up the unit, puts it. You never know more than the agents themselves and there are soo many red herrins along the way which just adds to the tension. This unit beleives the only way to find someone is to find out as much as possible about their life often with very unexpected revelations - nothing or should I say no-one is as they first seem in this programme.

Overall a brilliant programme and fully recommended even in todays world which features many good cop shows such as CSI etc. but in my opinion none can compete.