Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Cahill U.S. Marshal Blu-ray Movie Review

The Sons of J.D. Cahill

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 31, 2015

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.

In a pre-credit teaser, Wayne's Marshal J.D. Cahill confronts a group of five fugitives who make the mistake of underestimating the lawman pursuing them and refuse to surrender peacefully. Some of them don't survive the encounter. But the opening is the closest that Cahill gets to a classic Western confrontation, because the script by Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink (who had written Big Jake for Wayne) has a different story to tell. While the marshal has spent many years becoming the most feared and admired representative of law enforcement in Texas, he has neglected his duties as a father to his two sons, Danny (Gary Grimes, Summer of '42) and Billy Joe, whom Cahill calls "Budger" (Clay O'Brien). Cahill knows that he hasn't been a good dad, and the guilt gnaws at him, but he doesn't know how to make amends. Developments at home will force him to find a way.

When Cahill returns to the town of Jefferson Davis with his captives (alive, dead and wounded), he learns that the bank has been robbed in his absence. Despite an exhaustive search, the thieves have escaped without leaving a trail. What the audience knows, but Cahill doesn't, at least not yet, is that the heist was an inside job, aided and abetted by his two sons. The gang is led by a wily and vicious outlaw named Fraser (Oscar winner George Kennedy, Cool Hand Luke), and it includes a young man named Struther, whom Cahill was trying to reform (Morgan Paull, who would later be best known as Holden, the "blade runner" who gets shot in the opening scene of Blade Runner). Struther and Fraser persuaded Danny Cahill to join them in a drunken brawl so that they'd be jailed for the night, giving them a perfect alibi for the bank job. All they needed was a diversion, which "Budger" Cahill created by setting a fire, then slipping Danny the keys to the cell doors. For Danny, it was an act of rebellion against his father—but he didn't expect anyone to get killed.

While much of the literal action of Cahill is concerned with solving the bank robbery, the real story is the rift that must be bridged between the marshal and his sons, who find themselves trapped between the father they respect and the thief of whom they're deathly afraid. The situation is complicated by the marshal's arrest of another gang of thieves who have enough cash (from an unrelated theft) to make them likely suspects for the bank robbery. With swift frontier justice, these thieves are tried and sentenced to hang for the wrong crime, and Cahill's sons feel even more pressure to break their silence. Cahill can sense that his boys are in trouble, and even if he didn't already blame himself for his failings as a father, he has plenty of people to remind him, including his landlady, Mrs. Green (Marie Windsor), and his friend Lightfoot (Neville Brand), the half-Native American tracker whom Cahill engages to help search for the robbers.

Wayne himself was critical of Cahill, faulting both the writing and the execution, but the Duke's judgment may have been influenced by the fact that he learned during filming that his long-time friend and mentor, John Ford, was dying of cancer. Director Andrew V. McLaglen, in his fifth outing with Wayne (after Chisum, The Undefeated, Hellfighters and McClintock!), staged scenes just as adroitly as in any of his other Westerns, including the numerous episodes of Gunsmoke he directed for television. But Cahill is different, because the story is more about the hero's failures than his successes. Although the weariness that hangs over Wayne's character has often been attributed to personal factors, it suits the character's recognition of the consequences of his own failings, as the marshal gradually realizes the depth of his children's involvement in major crimes and the danger that now threatens them. Much of the film is told from the boys' point of view, and from that vantage the classic John Wayne character appears in a less than flattering light. In the same way that Clint Eastwood's later films critique the violence enacted by Dirty Harry, Cahill quietly asks whether a life spent charging around on horseback shooting it out with bad guys is really such a noble thing after all. By the end of the film, both the marshal and his sons have grown, but people had to die for them to do so.

Cahill U.S. Marshal Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 U.S. Marshal Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

Cahill U.S. Marshal Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2003 DVD of Cahill U.S. Marshal.

• Commentary with Director Andrew McLaglen: McLaglen, who passed away in 2014, mentions at one point that he is recording this commentary in 2002. He remains pleased with Cahill and is clearly delighted that it has retained enough of a following to support a director's commentary. He talks about nearly all of the actors, and he takes special delight in pointing out which exterior scenes were shot outdoors and which were shot on huge soundstages where the light could be controlled. Although the commentary has many gaps where McLaglen falls silent, this is a case where the opportunity to preserve cinema history wasn't missed.



• The Man Behind the Star (480i; 1.33:1; 7:47): This vintage promotional featurette mixes a somewhat romanticized history of U.S. frontier marshals with information about the film.



• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 2.35:1, enhanced; 2:46): "Cahill was a man who'd done a lot. There was a lot left to do."

Cahill U.S. Marshal Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.