Longmire: The Complete Fifth Season Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.5

Longmire: The Complete Fifth Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Who Can You Trust?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 17, 2017

As Netflix begins streaming the sixth and final season of Longmire, it's a good occasion to look back at Season Five of the modern-day Western drama, which the Warner Archive Collection has released on Blu-ray. Season Five was the second to be streamed as a Netflix original after A&E abruptly canceled Longmire over howls of protest (among other reasons, because the series was left on a nail-biting cliffhanger). Since the show's rescue by Netflix, Longmire's creators have taken full advantage of their freedom from commercials and an expanded running time to shift their series from its original episodic format toward a continuous tale (or, more accurately, several of them). The trend continued in Season Five, where extended plotlines unfurled at a deliberate pace over the course of ten episodes, enlivened by the arrival of new characters, the return of familiar faces and the threat of ever more powerful forces buffeting Sheriff Walt Longmire's beloved Absaroka County.

Spoiler alert: The discussion below assumes that the reader is familiar with the first four seasons of Longmire and contains spoilers—huge spoilers—for those who are not. Anyone new to the series should go here for a spoiler-free review of Seasons One & Two. If you read beyond this point without having seen all prior seasons, you have only yourself to blame.

Uncertainty gnaws at Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) throughout Longmire's fifth season, and the experience is as unsettling for the audience as it is for the sheriff, whose stout-hearted dependability has always been the show's reliable anchor. Walt begins Season Five gravely injured by an unseen assailant whose stealthy approach concluded the previous season—and worst of all, the sheriff can't recall either the attack or the attacker. After Walt predictably insists on checking himself out of the hospital against medical advice to take personal charge of the investigation, he never fully recovers his equilibrium.

The sheriff's loyal staff does their best to back him up, even though his judgment is obviously impaired and his patience is thinner than usual. Office manager Ruby (the incomparable Louanne Stephens) maintains order and guides operations, while Deputy Ferguson a/k/a "Ferg" (Adam Bartley) provides the same unswerving loyalty that has made him one of the show's beloved fixtures. Good things happen to Ferg in Season Five, who finally gets both a love interest and a first name. But the deputy's happiness may be short-lived, when a prisoner transport that is supposed to be routine is greeted by a squadron of grim operatives armed with automatic weapons.

Walt's knotty relationship with his chief deputy, Victoria "Vic" Moretti (Katee Sackhoff), is just another of the many uncertainties ringing the sheriff's world. Having learned of Walt's budding romance with Dr. Donna Monaghan (Ally Walker), Vic tells herself and others that she is "moving on" from any interest in her boss, but her behavior belies her protestations. Her efforts to regain her footing after so many traumas—a sadistic stalker, a bitter divorce, captivity and torture by a fanatical survivalist—lead her to make abrupt and radical changes in her life. These include a relocation (she finally moves out of Cady Longmire's apartment) and a shift in personal circumstances that catches even Vic by surprise. All the while, Walt's feelings about Vic remain a question mark. His demeanor is thoroughly professional and respectable, but there are telltale signs that he's holding something back.

Walt's most piercing doubts come from those closest to him. He has yet to recover from the news that his cherished daughter, Cady (Cassidy Freeman), has accepted a generous endowment from casino owner Jacob Nighthorse (A Martinez) to establish a legal aid clinic on the rez. Nighthorse remains Walt Longmire's nemesis, and the sheriff cannot shake his conviction that the Native American magnate has his hand in multiple criminal enterprises. But regardless of her father's doubts (and her own), Cady gamely accepts the challenge of her new job, setting up a makeshift office in a foreclosed home on the rez and offering whatever services the local population may need: adoptions, orders of protection, claims against the government, criminal defense. With the rez's inhabitants treating her with suspicion, Cady's very presence in this unfamiliar territory thrusts her into risky situations with potentially deadly consequences. All the while, Nighthorse uses every opportunity to draw the young lawyer closer to him and further from her dad—or is he just safeguarding his investment? With Nighthorse, one never knows.

Even more shattering for Walt than Cady's employment by his arch-enemy is Walt's loss of faith in his best friend since childhood, Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips). Since assuming the mantle of the masked Cheyenne vigilante known as "Hector", Henry has routinely lied to his closest pal, and in Season Five those lies begin to catch up with the Native American barkeep. Complicating Henry's circumstances are awkward partnerships with untrustworthy partners like Nighthorse (who has promised to help Henry recover ownership of his tavern, the Red Pony) and with the tribal police chief, Matthias (Zahn McClarnon), who blackmails Henry into assisting him in fighting the rez's growing opioid crisis. When the activities of "Hector" begin to impinge on Walt's investigations, the sheriff and Henry are set on a collision course that their friendship may not survive.

As Walt navigates this personal quagmire, he also encounters several new faces with sinister intentions. One of Season Five's most intriguing new characters is also its most dangerous. It belongs to an Irish mob boss, Shane Muldoon (Dylan Walsh), whose organization is running drugs and prostitution through Nighthorse's newly opened casino and hotel—though whether Nighthorse knows about the illicit operation remains an open question. Muldoon's contact at the casino is Nighthorse's brutal chief of security, Malachi Strand (Graham Greene), the former Cheyenne police chief whom Walt put in jail for extortion and corruption and who has remained the sheriff's sworn enemy. According to Malachi, he's just doing Nighthorse's bidding, but Nighthorse claims otherwise, and the tangle of conflicting accusations is beyond even Walt's ability to unravel. Meanwhile, Muldoon casually orders executions from his headquarters in Boston and occasionally drops by Absaroka County to fish in its beautiful mountain streams.

Another important new face is Tucker Baggett (Brett Rice), the lawyer representing the estate of the late Barlow Connally (Gerald McRaney) in the wrongful death case filed against Walt at the end of Season Four. A good old boy with a buckskin jacket and a shark's intensity of purpose, Baggett relishes his pursuit of Walt, even as Walt refuses to take the lawsuit seriously, despite the urging of the anxious lawyer Cady hired for him (Patch Darragh). Walt insists there's nothing to it because he was exonerated for Barlow's death by an FBI investigation, but Baggett is playing a different game, and his strategy gradually unfolds as the season evolves. In the closing moments of the final episode, Baggett's full agenda is revealed, and with it both Walt and Longmire are returned to the very beginnings of the show, except that the stakes have been raised. In the pilot episode, Walt emerged from mourning for his murdered wife, only to discover that his job was being threatened. Now, his enemies have targeted the very core of his existence.

Longmire: The Complete Fifth Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Longmire continues to be shot with Red Epic and Red MX digital cameras. Much of Season Five was photographed by series veterans J. Michael Muro and Cameron Duncan, both of whom worked on the pilot, but an additional frequent cameraman was Todd Dos Reis (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend). Although the series is set in a fictional Wyoming county, it continues to use New Mexico locations, where the blue skies and expansive landscapes provide both visual splendor and the larger sense of a spiritual world that is so important to many of Longmire's characters, including the sheriff himself.

The image on the Warner Archive Collection's four 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray discs (one BD-25 and three BD-50s) is consistent with that on the previous six-disc set for Seasons One and Two, the three-disc set for Season Three and the four-disc set for Season Four: excellent detail in both bright light and darkness, deep and solid blacks and rich, saturated colors across a wide and varied spectrum. The Blu-rays of Longmire continue to rank among the best-looking TV product available, and the image on the Season Five discs consistently improves on the streaming version seen on Netflix, where tighter compression can cause minor banding and other artifacts. WAC's Blu-rays, by contrast, feature a generous average bitrate of just over 30 Mbps.

Longmire: The Complete Fifth Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The audio mix for Longmire's Season Five, presented in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, follows the style established in previous seasons. Sounds of nature are frequently present in the surrounds, whether of birds calling or water rushing through Absaroka County's many river beds. We don't get to hear the cacophony of Jacob Nighthorse's casino as frequently as in Season Four, but when we do, the contrast with the natural environment remains striking. A scene of forest firefighters in training provides some interesting sonic effects in Episode 7 ("From This Day Forward") and a hail of gunfire blasts through the speakers in Episode 5 (which is appropriately entitled "Pure Peckinpah"). Thunderous weapons also figure prominently in Episode 7 and Episode 8 ("Stand Your Ground"). Several fistfights in the Red Pony are spread throughout the season, with appropriate blows and crashes. All of this has been effectively underscored by David Shephard, who continues his distinctive blend of Western themes with thriller rhythms.

Longmire: The Complete Fifth Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Where Season Four of Longmire had no extras, Season Five provides a short featurette entitled "Scoring Longmire" (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:24), in which composer David Shephard discusses his approach to composing the show's compelling score.

Longmire: The Complete Fifth Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The arrival of Longmire's final season is a cause for excitement but also sadness. However the show's creators have chosen to resolve their many interwoven plot lines, long-time viewers are likely to remain unsatisfied simply because we don't want the show to end. It's some comfort that WAC has given the entire series a first-rate Blu-ray treatment, so that fans can revisit it again and again. Season Five joins its predecessors in being highly recommended.