5.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
After Ransom Pride (Scott Speedman) is gunned down in Mexico, Juliette Flowers (Lizzy Caplan) vows to bring his body home to Texas. She spills blood on the border to honor her oath and does battle with savage bounty hunters and a murderous reverend along the way.
Starring: Lizzy Caplan, Cote de Pablo, Peter Dinklage, Scott Speedman, Jason PriestleyDrama | 100% |
Western | 83% |
Thriller | 76% |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
The Western is probably the most quintessentially American genre of film, perhaps even more so than the musical. The history of the United States is, after all, one of westward expansion and that slow creep toward the Pacific has given filmmakers a wealth of storylines. While a lot of Westerns have fallen into the B-movie cliché of good guys versus bad guys (typically Indians, as they were uniformly called back in the day), when one looks over the entire history of this genre, there are really some amazingly profound and nuanced contributions to the oater idiom. As long ago as John Ford’s inimitable work, notably Stagecoach, we got incredibly well rounded characters who just happened to find themselves in a western setting. While the 1940s tended to churn out programmers, courtesy of budget lined Republic and Universal, the 1950s saw a whole new explosion of thoughtful entries in the Western genre, including some unusual offerings from Anthony Mann. The 1960s gave us everything from Marlon Brando’s sole directing effort, One Eyed Jacks, to Sam Peckinpah’s iconic The Wild Bunch, and just for good measure we had the populist offering of George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, to name but three Westerns with decidedly different approaches and techniques. The ensuing decades saw a number of high profile, sometimes intentionally "artsy" takes on the Western, including everything from Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller to Eastwood's Unforgiven. It would be easy to dismiss director Tiller Russell’s 2009 feature The Last Rites of Ransom Pride as a studied case in style over substance, one which attempts to invest the Western genre with a sort of proto-punk/pulp ambience, and that feeling is probably supported by Tiller’s obscenity laced commentary, where he can barely get a sentence out without dropping the f-bomb (repeatedly). But upon further inspection The Last Rites of Ransom Pride may actually have a little meat on its admittedly very stylish bones.
The Last Rites of Ransom Pride features one of the more intentionally stylized images in recent memory, and that may affect the way individuals respond to the perceived quality. Encoded via AVC, in 1080p and 1.78:1, Last Rites has a variety of visual tricks up its bandolero sleeve, including lots of extremely grainy black and white shots with blown out contrast. Alternatively, we also get a wealth of desaturated segments (in fact a lot of this film is extremely desaturated) with low contrast, especially in the dark scenes. But this is all no doubt intentional. Detail is reasonably sharp throughout this presentation, especially in the desaturated day scenes. It's really impossible to talk about the color palette here, as everything is processed so strangely, but suffice it to say the film has a very distinctive look that often tends toward sepia tones. My one real qualm with this transfer is that it's really unclear whether we're dealing with post-processing or actual digital noise in some of the desert scenes. It looks like noise to me, but it may well have been another "stylistic" choice the filmmakers made to give this film an unusual appearance.
The Last Rites of Ransom Pride has a reasonably effective lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix. The surround immersion is excellent in the shootout scene and the climactic chase scene between horse riders and Juliette on a motorcycle with a sidecar. Dialogue does tend to get buried in the mix quite a bit of the time, perhaps due to the "Method Acting" mumbling proclivities of some of the performers. Jeff Danna's anachronistic score is mixed rather loudly, and may distract some listeners as a result of that. There are several interesting sound effects utilized throughout the film, notably a loud, jarring "whoosh" noise during the quick cut interstitials, that make the sonic experience palpable. LFE is in fact rather robust throughout the film, but, again, it tends to overpower the general mix at times.
The Last Rites of Ransom Pride features an expletive-laden commentary by director Tiller Russell and a second person I can only surmise is uncredited editor Doug Johnson, as he's never properly introduced. This commentary can be pretty much summed up, for better worse, by Russell's oft-used "f***in' awesome," and by that I don't mean to qualitatively describe the commentary, just give you some idea of what you'll be listening to for an hour and a half. Also included are some brief, and very effective, Web Teasers (HD; 2:56) which helped promote the film.
If you're in the mood for a decidedly different, in fact patently odd, western, you will probably enjoy The Last Rites of Ransom Pride, despite its obvious excesses. If you long for the days of John Wayne and John Ford, you'll probably do best to just pass this one by. I personally enjoyed this, if only for its very unique visual flair, and so am recommending it to you more adventurous viewers.
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Warner Archive Collection
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Standard Edition
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Standard Edition | C'era una volta il West 4K
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2-Disc Collector's Edition
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