Plunder Road Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Plunder Road Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 17, 2013

As a born and bred (really shouldn’t that be bred and born?) Utahn, I must confess to laughing out loud when the quasi- noir Plunder Road supposedly plied the back roads of my typically squeaky clean and not exactly noirish home state in its depiction of a daring railroad hold up and its aftermath, as a quintet of bad guys makes off with a huge fortune in gold bullion but finds out once they get outside of the sylvan climes of the Wasatch Range, things can get ugly—fast. With no real A-listers in the cast (trivia hounds may recognize Jeanne Cooper as the formidable star of The Young and the Restless and mother of L.A. Law's Corbin Bernsen), and a director whose name (Hubert Cornfield) may be his most memorable achievement, Plunder Road might seem on its surface not to have much to recommend it, but that's actually not the case.

The gang (which includes great character actors like Gene Raymond, Stafford Repp and Elisha Cook Jr.) split up into separate traveling parties, each in a disguised truck carrying part of the loot, but things almost immediately go awry for all of them. Plunder Road is a surprisingly tense affair, building to a great climax on the frantic freeway system of Los Angeles. Beautiful location photography (in Regalscope, Fox's second string name for CinemaScope) by the legendary Ernest Haller helps to lift this entry far above its more typical B-movie drive-in fare kin. Plunder Road is one road noir fans are going to want to travel.

Plunder Road Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Plunder Road is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Aside from some relatively minor and completely expected age related damage, this is one of the more lustrous black and white offerings we've seen from Olive. Contrast is very strong and consistent, blacks are impressively deep, and gray scale is nicely modulated. The image is very well defined, with fine detail offering nice accountings of weathered faces and the admittedly low key costumes. Haller's gorgeous cinematography really captures a sense of time and place, from the lesser traveled roads of the American southwest to the crowded urban cityscape of Los Angeles.

Plunder Road Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Plunder Road features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix which has no damage to report, and which offers dialogue, sound effects and a nicely propulsive score (by Irving Gertz) with excellent fidelity and prioritization. This is not a big, bombastic assault on the senses by any stretch, but it gets the job done without any problems whatsoever.

Plunder Road Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Plunder Road Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's no mistaking Plunder Road's "second feature on a double bill" status, but it's a surprisingly well made film that offers great location photography and some nice performances from a game cast of notable character actors. Anyone who's ever gotten stuck in Los Angeles traffic is going to love the denouement of this film. Recommended.