6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Lawman J.D. Cahill can stand alone against a bad-guy army. But as a widower father, he's on insecure footing raising two sons. Particularly when he suspects his boys are involved in a bank robbery - and two killings.
Starring: John Wayne, George Kennedy, Gary Grimes, Neville Brand, Clay O'BrienWestern | 100% |
Drama | 21% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital Mono
German: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono (Spain)
Portuguese: Dolby Digital Mono
English SDH, French, German SDH, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
In the 1970s, John Wayne remained one of the planet's biggest movie stars, but the Duke and film culture fell increasingly out of sync as new voices emerged from the rubble of the old studio system. Wayne hated the explicit violence that became common on the screen after Bonnie and Clyde shocked audiences in 1967. He complained that Sam Peckinpah's bloody The Wild Bunch (1969) destroyed the myth of the Old West, and he criticized Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973) for its brutality. The Duke was also repulsed by sexually explicit content, especially if the sex was in any way tawdry or "deviant". He was disappointed that Midnight Cowboy, which was then rated X, won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1969, and he disliked the language and nudity (not to mention the anti-establishment themes) in the countercultural hit, Easy Rider. At his stage in the game, Wayne had the credibility, clout and wherewithal to continue making films any way he chose through his company, Batjac Productions. Two such Westerns were released by Warner in 1973, The Train Robbers and Cahill U.S. Marshall. Neither was successful, and neither is first-tier Wayne, but both have their appeal. These are the two films new to Blu-ray that Warner is releasing both separately and as part of the John Wayne Westerns Collection.
Cahill U.S. Marshal was shot by the respected and highly versatile cinematographer Joseph F. Biroc, whose credits range from It's a Wonderful Life to Airplane! and whom Mel Brooks has credited with teaching him essential skills of moviemaking. Unfortunately, Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is only a fair reproduction of Biroc's anamorphic widescreen photography, with inconsistent and often weak detail, especially in long shots, and sharpness that is equally variable. Some scenes look better than others, and for many viewers, especially those with smaller screens, I suspect the disc will be deemed satisfactory on the ground that "this is the best it's ever looked". It is, however, less than it could be, and it is noticeably inferior to The Train Robbers, which is being released at the same time. As has often been the case with Warner's catalog titles, the culprit appears to be high frequency filtering for the purpose of fitting this 102-minute film onto a BD-25 (and Warner hasn't even used all of the available space on the disc). With an average bitrate of 18.96 Mbps, fine detail appears to have been sacrificed to conserve space. There are compensatory strengths, however. The earth-toned color palette is vividly reproduced, and the nighttime blacks are dark and solid. Warner's catalog titles have frequently made a good impression on collectors with such qualities, and fans of the Duke should find this iteration of Cahill an improvement over any previous version.
Cahill's original mono track has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0, and the quality is first rate. The blaze that serves as a diversion for the bank robbery is appropriately loud and aggressive, as is the bucket brigade that attempts to extinguish it. Gunshots, rain storms, hoofbeats and other sound effects register with appropriate impact. The dialogue is always clear, and Elmer Bernstein's spirited score plays with impressive fidelity.
The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2003 DVD of Cahill U.S. Marshal.
Reports continue to circulate of a change in Warner's strategy toward its catalog titles, but this Blu-ray version of Cahill U.S. Marshal is consistent with the studio's approach to date, which is to bundle a few newly released titles with reissues of existing discs in some sort of collection, in this case the John Wayne Westerns Collection. Typically, the new titles are given a bargain-basement treatment, and that is certainly the case here. Since Cahill is unlikely to be revisited, fans will have to settle for this version.
1973
1959
1943
Limited Edition to 3000
1958
Warner Archive Collection
1948
1947
1950
1958
1966
1976
1950
Warner Archive Collection
1956
1971
1969
1970
1962
1976
1965
Warner Archive Collection
1952
Fox Studio Classics
1939