Longmire: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.5

Longmire: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie Review

No Rest for the Weary

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 20, 2016

After its untimely cancellation by A&E, Longmire became the first Warner-produced TV series to be released as a Netflix original. When Netflix posted the ten episodes of Season Four on September 10, 2015, legions of Longmire fans who had successfully lobbied for the show's continuation immediately began binge-watching the new installments, desperate to learn what had happened after the whiplash-inducing revelations that concluded Season Three.

Like the Netflix deal itself, the Warner Archive Collection's release of Season Four on Blu-ray represents an experiment. Will fans be interested in acquiring on disc the same Longmire episodes that have been available 24/7 and commercial-free for over a year? While WAC hasn't provided any extras to sweeten the deal, there are still good reasons for fans to consider the Season Four Blu-ray set. WAC's typically generous compression ratios offer a noticeable uptick in video quality, which is a meaningful consideration given Longmire's cinematic style and spectacular landscapes. And the show's densely plotted episodes readily lend themselves to repeat viewing, especially in Season Four, where the creative team has taken full advantage of their liberation from commercial interruptions to deepen the storytelling with expanded running times. When Longmire was shown on A&E, it was limited to the 43-minute length of an advertiser-sponsored hour-long drama, often necessitating drastic cuts, as exemplified by the extended versions of two episodes from Season Two provided as Blu-ray extras. Netflix imposes no such limitations, and Season Four's episodes run anywhere from 55 to 69 minutes, allowing complete freedom for the writers to explore Longmire's multilayered, overlapping storylines.

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

At the end of Season Three, Sheriff Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) finally brought himself to scatter his late wife's ashes, after which he set off on a quest for vengeance against the man he blamed for her death, aspiring Cheyenne casino magnate Jacob Nighthorse (A Martinez). Unbeknownst to Walt, however, the real author of his anguish was someone else, and the truth had been uncovered by his disgraced former deputy and political opponent, Branch Connally (Bailey Chase). In the season's final minutes, Branch confronted his father, real estate tycoon Barlow Connally (Gerald McRaney), who admitted that he secretly attempted to further his son's quest for the sheriff's office by arranging the murder of Walt's wife, calculating that the grieving lawman would retire. As father and son absorbed the impact of Barlow's confession, a shotgun blast was heard and an ejected shell was seen hitting the ground. Viewers were left to guess at what had happened.

The early episodes of Season Four deal with the aftermath of that shotgun blast. Meanwhile, Walt's best friend, Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips), intervenes to deflect the sheriff from his intended assassination of Nighthorse. Without revealing the outcome, it can fairly be said that the Connally family feud eventually achieves resolution and Walt belatedly receives a modicum of justice for his slain wife, but the echoes of Barlow's cold-blooded machinations continue to resonate throughout the season (and beyond). For three seasons, Walt Longmire has trusted his inner moral compass, but the events of Season Four prompt him to question old certainties. The Longmire we first met at the beginning of the series instinctively knew the difference between right and wrong, justice and the law, forbearance and forgiveness—or at least he thought so. In Season Four, Walt doubts his instincts. Displaced from the moral high ground that he has occupied with such confidence (and that has prompted others to accuse him of self-righteousness), Walt finds himself stumbling through a swamp of ethical ambiguity, both in his own life and in the cases he investigates.

Henry faces a parallel struggle after his exoneration on murder charges at the conclusion of Season Three. One of the casualties of the campaign to free Henry was the Cheyenne vigilante known as Hector (Jeffrey De Serrano), whom Henry enlisted to help avenge Walt's wife and who was murdered as a result. Hector served the weak and helpless of "the rez" as a kind of Native American equalizer, responding to pleas for assistance left at the rock formation known as "Hector's Wall". Now, Henry feels an obligation to assume Hector's mantle, as he returns repeatedly to the Wall to read heartrending notes left by desperate souls, mostly women and children, begging for the dead hero's intervention. Soon, the slogan "Hector Lives" begins appearing in graffiti scrawled all over the rez, but Henry's efforts will draw him into ever more perilous situations. By the season's end, he has once again become a wanted man, after his efforts to assist a rape victim (Julia Jones) lead to violent consequences.

Season Four sees the much-delayed opening of Jacob Nighthorse's Four Arrows Casino and Resort complex, which Walt and his wife opposed on environmental grounds but which Nighthorse continues to promote as the Cheyenne nation's ticket to a better life. Nighthorse insists that he built the gambling compound not for personal enrichment but as a source of funding for schools, clinics and other public services on the rez—although, as Walt's daughter, Cady (Cassidy Freeman), is quick to point out, Nighthorse is the only Cheyenne in sight who is wearing Prada. Indeed, Nighthorse's claim to charitable intent is routinely contradicted by his actions, which include hiring the corrupt Malachi Strand (Graham Greene), the disgraced former chief of the tribal police, as his head of security. Nighthorse remains one of Longmire's most complex and mysterious characters, an inscrutable figure whose charm is just as calculated as his threats. By the end of Season Four, he will even manage to ensnare Cady in his plans, whatever they may ultimately be.

Just as its opponents feared, the Four Arrows Casino brings traffic congestion and a surge in crime to Absaroka County. A minor collision between two charter buses ferrying tourists to the casino initially seems like a traffic mishap, but when the dust clears, a body in a duffel bag has been left by the roadside (Episode 4, "Four Arrows", directed by and guest-starring Peter Weller). Groups of hard-partying oil workers enjoy their off-hours at the casino, then adjourn to the rez, where they can misbehave with impunity, because the sheriff's office lacks jurisdiction and the tribal police led by Chief Mathias (Zahn McClarnon) have limited authority over non-Native Americans. When Walt and Mathias strike a bargain to coordinate their efforts at catching such violators, they come up against an oil company representative, Walker Browning (Callum Keith Rennie), who is fiercely protective of his men and whose suave exterior masks a ruthless amorality.

Walt's deputies, "Vic" Moretti (Katee Sackhoff) and "The Ferg" Ferguson (Adam Bartley), must adapt to working with new colleagues, as the sheriff evaluates replacements for Branch, whom he fired in Season Three. Vic's situation is complicated by the aftermath of her divorce from husband Sean (Michael Mosley) and her realization that, just as Sean claimed, her true affection bends in Walt's direction. But whether Vic's much older boss returns her feelings is unclear, especially after Walt begins tentatively courting a VA psychiatrist, Dr. Donna Sue Monaghan (Ally Walker), whom he meets while investigating a robbery at a veteran's home (Episode 5, "Help Wanted").

The uncertainties that bedevil both Walt and Henry in Season Four (and may eventually set the life-long best friends against each other) were foreshadowed in the previous season's pessimistic exchange between Walt and Lucian Connally (Peter Weller), Walt's predecessor as sheriff and, not coincidentally, the brother of Barlow and uncle of Branch (Season Three, Episode 5, "Wanted Man"). The pointed question that Walt posed to Lucian—"Do you ever feel you've created more evil than you've stopped?"—is repeated at the close of Season Four, as Walt is stalked by an unknown assailant, and a montage of his many enemies flashes across the screen. The high price exacted from those who insist on trying to do the right thing has been one of Longmire's central themes from the beginning. As the debut of Season Five approaches, you can be sure that those costs will keep adding up.

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

Longmire continues to be shot on the Red Epic and Red MX digital cameras. Most of Season Four was shot by series veterans J. Michael Muro and Cameron Duncan, both of whom worked on the pilot. Although the series is set in a fictional Wyoming county, it uses 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 and the three-disc set for Season Three: 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 Four 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 30.99 Mbps.

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

The audio mix for Longmire's Season Four, presented in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, follows the style established in previous seasons. Sounds of nature are frequently present in the surrounds, and in Season Four they contrast sharply with the rattle of chips and the jingle of slot machines whenever the action shifts to the Four Arrows Casino. The currents of a rushing river underline crucial scenes in Episode 1 ("Down by the River"), which concludes with a scene in which the threatening growl of multiple truck engines cuts through the night. A firing range tryout for prospective new deputies provides a cacophony of gunfire in Episode 5 ("Help Wanted"), and the cry of soaring hawks is an essential sonic element in Episode 10 ("What Happens on the Rez"). All of this has been effectively underscored by David Shephard, who continues his distinctive blend of Western themes with thriller rhythms. The soundtrack also benefits from thematically apt songs by such indie bands as The Milk Carton Kids, The Bones of L.R. Jones and Wye Oak, whose ballad "Civilian" plays over the season close.

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

No extras are included with Season Four.

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

In the words of John Coveny, Longmire's co-creator and showrunner, Season Three "threw a lot of knives in the air", but many of them have been caught by the end of Season Four. With the mystery surrounding the death of Walt's wife now solved, Longmire must chart a new course for its finely tuned exploration of old-fashioned frontier values confronting the uncertainties of the modern world. According to Coveny, the creative team has already mapped out multiple additional seasons, believing that "it's a rich world, and we're just beginning to scratch the surface of it". If history is any guide, Longmire's loyal fans will be there to support it for as long as the show continues. Very highly recommended.