6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Frontier marshall Jake Wade confronts his criminal past in the person of bank robber Clint Hollister, Jake's former partner, who takes Jake's fiancee hostage to force Jake to lead him to buried loot.
Starring: Robert Taylor (I), Richard Widmark, Patricia Owens, Robert Middleton, Henry SilvaWestern | 100% |
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)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Director John Sturges made two classic Westerns, The Magnificent Seven (original version) and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and I would argue that he made a third in Bad Day at Black Rock, which has all the earmarks of a traditional American frontier tale despite being set in 1945. Sturges also made some well-crafted genre exercises that may not rank with this exalted company but are nevertheless satisfying entertainments. One of them is The Law and Jake Wade, a 1958 MGM release elevated by strong lead performances from Rod Taylor and Richard Widmark. The efficient script was written by William Hawks (brother of Howard) from a novel of the same name by prolific author Marvin H. Albert, who would go on to create the character of Tony Rome memorably portrayed by Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome and Lady in Cement.
The Law and Jake Wade was shot in Cinemascope by three-time Oscar winner Robert Surtees
(Ben-Hur, The Sting and The Graduate, among many others). The film appeared in the same year
as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and it was
photographed on the same problematic Eastmancolor stock
subject to the deterioration known as "yellow layer collapse" (discussed in the review of Silk
Stockings, another film from the same period). The Warner Archive Collection's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray reflects the progress that
WAC and Warner's Motion Picture Imaging facility
have made in taming the effects of yellow layer collapse since those two discs were released.
To bring Jake Wade to Blu-ray, MPI scanned a recent interpositive at 2K, followed by color
correction using various archival sources as a reference and, of course, extensive cleanup to
remove dust, scratches and age-related wear. Although MPI can't add back more detail than was
there (and, thankfully, they haven't tried), it has achieved an impressively stable image, resolving
the grain as tightly as the source will permit. Sharpness is good enough that one can easily spot
the difference between the scenic location photography (much of it shot in California's Death
Valley National Park) and the soundstages where painted backdrops provide the scenery. Blacks
are solidly rendered (although the day-for-night photography remains obvious). While the colors
may not have the vibrancy of classic Technicolor, they're sufficiently rich to bring the landscape
alive and convey the appropriate sense of scale.
The Cinemascope lenses used in Jake Wade were notorious for visual distortions, including
instability at the far left and right of the frame during camera pans. This issue was previously
noted in The Sea Chase, and it appears
here as well, but once again the transfer is simply
rendering an accurate presentation of what was originally captured on film.
As with their recent release of The Man with
Two Brains, WAC has mastered the 89-minute film
on a BD-25, but the short running time combined with the lack of extras permits an average
bitrate of 30.49 Mbps, with a capable encode.
Jake Wade's original mono soundtrack has been encoded on Blu-ray in DTS-HD MA 2.0, and it's something of a letdown because of source issues. The film's original magnetic tracks have deteriorated past the point of salvaging, so that WAC had to search Warner's library to find the best available optical track. Several options were tried, and the strongest among them was chosen and cleaned of any age-related distortion, but its dynamic range is limited, with little in the way of bass extension and a top end that sounds thin and compressed. Still, the dialogue is always intelligible, and the essential sound effects are clearly heard. There's no scoring credit, because a musicians' strike forced MGM to use a canned soundtrack that, according to IMDb, included cues from over a dozen film composers.
The only supplement is a trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:04). Warner's 2008 DVD was similarly bare.
The Law and Jake Wade isn't a great Western, but it's a very good one, with first-rate direction
and two memorable lead performances. WAC has brought it to Blu-ray with a greater degree of
polish than I would have thought possible, given the source limitations. Recommended.
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