American Guns Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		2.0
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

American Guns Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 4, 2017

It's a divisive time in America. The left-right chasm is, in a few places, ever-so-slightly narrowing but in most places expanding wider than ever before. The challenges of the economy, health care, life, immigration, and terrorism are front-and-center, as they always seem to be, but if there's one issue that's fundamentally representative of the divide between left and right, it's the issue of guns. There are certainly extremes on both sides, but generally one sees most guns as dangerous weapons of murder and war that don't belong in the hands of ordinary citizens while the other views them as jacks-of-all-trades critical in the pursuits of sport, personal empowerment, self-defense, and protection from tyranny. Cries for total forced gun confiscations and opening up the arsenal and allowing Joe and Jane to drive their kids to school in a tank or in a Humvee with a mounted .50-caliber machine gun represent the fringes, but in the middle is the (usually) more honest debate that's centered around terms like "military-style" "high capacity" "want," "need," self-defense," "concealed carry," "constitution," "militia," and "bill of rights." It's an issue unlikely to disappear any time soon; passions run hon on either side, perhaps hotter than any other issue, even the hottest hot-button issue-of-the-day. Mill Creek's American Guns offers a fairly neutral, maybe a little pro-gun, look at the firearm's history and place in America's founding, her conflicts, and the gun's use by today's citizenry. It's a lower-end production but it's smartly put together and captivating across its nearly five-hour runtime.

America's gun, born in Austria.

Unlike the somewhat more broadly reaching Guns: The Evolution of Firearms, American Guns explores the firearms' place in U.S. history, dating back to Spanish explorers and the Arquebus and moving on through to the modern day and the Glock semiautomatic handgun. It explores the gun's inner workings and design evolutions, from single shot to lever action, from crank-operated to semi- and fully-automatic. It explores trends, key names and faces in the industry's evolution (Samuel Colt, Eugene Stoner, and Bill Ruger, for example), and how firearm production evolved over time ("lock, stock, and barrel") and helped influence modern production techniques. The film looks at how guns evolved to be more portable, carry more cartridges, offer more stopping power, fire to a longer range, increase accuracy, and improve on aesthetics. From the early pioneers to modern day competition, from the Old West to the battlefields of Europe and Asia, the program offers a fascinating, in-depth exploration of the gun in action and its place in shaping the nation, and the world, as it is today.

The documentary usually covers its bases well enough, cramming a fair bit of critical information, historical renderings or recreations, and newly crafted interview clips, museum showpieces, and shooting range demonstrations within each 22-minute episode. There's no shortage of history and technical jargon, but audiences with even a poor grasp of firearm fundamentals will feel welcome, involved, and educated as the program moves along. It doesn't explore any hot-button political controversies, focusing instead on how guns are made, how their designs and functions have evolved, and how they have been utilized throughout the nation's history. There's a generous spread of content and information from a number of figures and authorities. It's well written and spoken and the documentary's assemblage from a myriad of sources is smart and precise. It's engaging and informative, a dream come true for gun enthusiasts, a fine starting point for novices, and a balanced perspective on the gun's place in history for those looking to expand their horizons or looking for a different, historically grounded perspective beyond the noise in the media.

American Guns is broken down into the following 13 programs:

• Program 1: The Kentucky Long Rifle and the Revolutionary War
• Program 2: U.S. Armories and the War of 1812
• Program 3: Breechloaders and Jacksonian Democracy
• Program 4: Trouble in Texas and Samuel Colt
• Program 5: Prelude to War and Increased Fire Power
• Program 6: Guns of the American Civil War
• Program 7: The Six Shooter and America's New Industrial Age
• Program 8: The Long Gun and America's New Industrial Age
• Program 9: Dawn of Modern Firearms: Browning and the Spanish-American War
• Program 10: Guns of World War I and Gangsters
• Program 11: Guns of World War II
• Program 12: Guns of Korea, Vietnam, and 21st Century Warfare
• Program 13: Guns for Hunters, Sport and Protection

American Guns Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

American Guns' 1080i transfer is besieged by various issues, and the 2.0 score may be a hair generous, but the fundamental portion of import to the score -- the new HD interview clips and segments -- fares just well enough to scrape by. That said, there are still issues aplenty. The 1080i image, even at its best, is prone to a ton of jagged edges. Would-be straight lines on guns, for example, are often stair-stepped instead. Banding, macroblocking, aliasing, noise, even false colors are often evident, though don't usually run quite as rampant as the jaggies. Detail is decent enough. Whether dense material sports coats or arid New Mexico terrain, there's enough raw HD textural definition to please, even if it is all a little slick and digital-flat. Dense facial hair and finer-point markings on guns -- wear on stocks and bluing or etching seen on Glocks in profile -- show that there's a lot of raw textural goodness on display. Colors aren't bad, however, certainly lacking the more dialed-in contrast and nuance of a high budget production but there's enough vibrancy on display to please. The 13 programs feature a nearly endless string of archival footage and still photos in various states of decay, but there's also old video footage that's fuzzy, pixelated, even, it seems, zoomed in to create a mess of an image in a few places. It's a lower end presentation to be sure, but given the seemingly limited budget and (rightful) focus on content rather than production values, there's not a ton of room to complain.

American Guns Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

American Guns' packaging claims that a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack is included, but in fact the disc contains a Dolby Digital 2.0 presentation. It probably doesn't matter, though. The material lacks elegance. Music is decently spaced along the front, but it's rather crude, lacking much nuance or raw instrumental clarity. Various gunfire pops are a bit puny and little bits of natural ambience in a few of the locations, like the New Mexico desert, deliver a few basic little bits of life environmental recreations that the microphone happens to pick up (along with gusting winds). Narration is adequately crisp and clear, interviews a little more muddled, but both are well prioritized and enjoy a natural center imagining. This is a track that gets the job done, tells the story, and supports it with whatever is necessary. It's good enough for the duty demanded of it, nothing more and nothing less.

American Guns Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

American Guns contains no supplemental content, but a Mill Creek digital copy code is included with purchase.

American Guns Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

American Guns is typical of the many Mill Creek documentary releases, before it programs like Vietnam: 50 Years Remembered, Emancipation Road, and JFK: A New World Order. It's abundantly informative, well written to be technical but easily understood, narrated with enthusiasm for the material, and supported by plenty of additional insights, video highlights, and historical images. It's certainly midrange to low end compared to the really high-class stuff on the marketplace. It's also not overtly political, though it does tend to favor the pro-gun side of the ledger in exploring the firearms' place in American history. This would make for a great video to play on loop at a gun shop (or even in clips for classroom duty) and it's certainly worth watching for firearms enthusiasts or those wishing to educate themselves on the gun's function, evolution, and place in American history, beyond the noise of the generally anti-gun media. Mill Creek's Blu-ray offers video that's a mixture of decent interview segments and well below par upscaled, zoomed, whatever'ed video, straightforward two-channel Dolby Digital audio, and no extras. Recommended purely on the series' quality only.