7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Cattle baron John Chisum joins forces with Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett to fight the Lincoln County land war.
Starring: John Wayne, Forrest Tucker, Christopher George, Ben Johnson, Glenn Corbett (I)Western | 100% |
Biography | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
German: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Czech: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
English SDH, French, German, Spanish, Czech
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Chisum plays differently today than when it first hit theaters in the summer of 1970. At a time
when the Western was being redefined by the blood-soaked ballet of The Wild Bunch and the
operatic excess of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy, Chisum looked like a throwback to a bygone
era. Director Andrew V. McLaglen was a Hollywood veteran who had overseen more episodes of
the long-running CBS series Gunsmoke than any other director and had
previously directed
Chisum's star, John Wayne, in McClintock!
and The Undefeated. When the
Duke's son and producer, Michael, decided to adapt the story of real-life rancher John Chisum as a vehicle for his
father, McLaglen was an obvious choice.
Screenwriter Andrew Fenady also came from TV, and he had spent years studying the history of
the Lincoln County Cattle War of 1878. The feud between New Mexico rancher Chisum and
aggressive businessman Lawrence Murphy has long been a fertile source of legend, thanks to the
involvement of such colorful characters as Pat Garrett and William H. Bonney a/k/a "Billy the
Kid". Fenady initially wrote Chisum as a short story, and he attempted to stick closely to actual
events. The tale that reached the screen took greater dramatic license, but it followed the broad
outlines of history. McLaglen would later pronounce Chisum to be one of his favorite films, and
he was especially proud of having presented William Bonney as "a human being, not a bad little
boy".
Chisum was shot in anamorphic widescreen by cinematographer William H. Clothier, a frequent collaborator of both John Wayne and director Andrew McLaglen. For the film's Blu-ray debut, Warner has newly scanned an interpositive at 2K, with extensive color-correction to bring the film as close as possible to its original appearance. The resulting 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray provides a faithful reproduction of the film's expansive vistas of the New Mexico landscapes (shot in the region near Durango). The stocks of the era could not replicate the intensity of the now-discontinued three-strip Technicolor, but Chisum's image captures a palette of rich earth tones under a sky that is blue enough to complement them. Flesh tones tend toward the ruddy, which is consistent with the outdoor life of the frontier. The film's grain pattern is finely resolved and, with due allowance for the limited depth of field permitted by anamorphic lenses of the period, the image is crisp and detailed. Warner has mastered Chisum at an average bitrate of 34.90 Mpbs, which is just a fraction under what has become the studio's standard target for catalog releases.
Chisum's original mono soundtrack has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, and it is one of the best mono presentations I have heard among recent catalog titles. The dynamic range is broad enough to render gun battles, galloping horses and stampeding cattle with presence and authority, even though the audio is confined to the front soundstage. Dialogue is clear and natural sounding. The classic Western score by Dominic Frontiere (The Train Robbers) blends naturally with the songs performed by narrator William Conrad and country music legend Merle Haggard. If the track were remixed for 5.1, the soundfield might be somewhat expanded, but I doubt that it could tell the story better.
The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2003 DVD of Chisum:
In the decades following Chisum, the Western would continue to be recast and reconsidered,
producing such varied achievements as Dances with
Wolves and Unforgiven. But the classic
frontier tropes that Chisum brought back to the screen in 1970 never went away. Lawrence
Kasdan revived them in Silverado, which lifts numerous
elements from Chisum, and Wayne
himself would star in another seven Westerns, including The Shootist and
Rooster Cogburn.
Chisum remains the grandest and most epic of the Duke's late-career works, and Warner has
given it the Blu-ray treatment it deserves. Highly recommended.
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50th Anniversary Edition | Shout Select #57
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