Concert footage from Dire Straits' concerts at Nimes, France, and Feyenoord Stadium, Rotterdam, Holland in May 1992. Tracks include: Calling Elvis; Walk of Life; Heavy Fuel; Romeo and Juliet; The Bug; Private Investigations; Your Latest Trick; On Every Street; You and Your Friend; Money for Nothing; Brothers in Arms; Solid Rock; Local Hero – Wild Theme.
The benchmark for Dire Straits concert films, and for most concert films, is their 1983 film Alchemy. Atmospheric with superb music, great virtuoso performances, excellent arrangements, well filmed. On The Night has the excellent musicianship but is quite up to the standard of Alchemy in the other departments.
The music has the obligatory overweight to tracks from their latest album, On Every Street, which is easily their worst album. The Bug and Heavy Fuel are pretty good but Calling Elvis must be their worst ever recording and the other two, You and Your Friend and On Every Street, are so-so. As a result, not much by way of pre-Brothers in Arms stuff, which harms the quality.
This also impacts on the arrangements. Their earlier stuff was long, wonderfully structured and majestic (Telegraph Road springs immediately to mind). The Brothers in Arms and On Every Street stuff was shorter and more commercial. So instead of these wonderfully long, structure-based songs we have more short and sharp ones.
Filming is fine, though pretty standard. Alchemy seemed to capture the essence of a live concert while this feels a bit more perfunctory.
Overall: very good, but not among the top concert films you'll ever see.