6 | / 10 |
Users | 3.5 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.2 |
Egocentric bandit Salvatore Giuliano fights the Church, the Mafia, and the landed gentry while leading a populist movement for Sicilian independence.
Starring: Christopher Lambert, Terence Stamp, Joss Ackland, John Turturro, Barbara SukowaDrama | 100% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
One might assume Michael Cimino might have been at least somewhat chastened by the debacle of Heaven's Gate (at least in its initial release) and his controversial follow up Year of the Dragon, but that evidently would be an incorrect assumption based in a reality other than the often hard (if not impossible) to understand environment of the film industry. According to many published reports, not to mention some well documented lawsuits that ended up accruing, Cimino was not about to be bullied when it came to his next film, The Sicilian. This is a film whose production and post-production processes have become fairly infamous, and the upshot is that many tend to view the film through the prism of the contentious ambience that seemed to surround the project almost from the get go. The Sicilian exists in two different versions, a theatrical cut that was the subject of much conflict (and legal action) back in the day and which opened to blistering reviews and minimal box office, and a longer, more expansive if not necessarily that much better Director’s Cut which purportedly is Cimino’s original vision for the Mario Puzo penned narrative (adapted for film by Steve Shagan and an apparently uncredited Gore Vidal, of all people). What’s kind of interesting about The Sicilian is that there was an actual historical figure named Salvatore Guiliano, portrayed in the film by Christopher Lambert (in a piece of casting which was the cause of much debate both in pre-production as well as afterward). Guiliano was a kind of post-World War II Italian Robin Hood, a modern day bandit who became something of a folk hero but who created consternation for the ruling powers of the day (such as they were in the chaos of the post-war period, an element which actually helped to give rise to Guiliano’s popularity). That would seem to provide more than enough raw content for a compelling film, but The Sicilian is a bumpy ride through Italian “history” at best.
The Sicilian is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is a rather widely disparate looking transfer, one that varies from very good to pretty shoddy looking, without much logic as to why any given scene looks better than another, other than perhaps the provenance of elements utilized to create this so-called Director's Cut. While a lot of the brightly lit outdoor scenes look relatively nice, with good levels of detail and a healthy and vibrant looking palette, there are a number of issues with compression and (especially) grain resolution that are extremely noticeable (see screenshots 8, 10, and 18 for examples). What's at least a little odd about this is that these anomalies are not entirely dependent on how light or dark a scene is. While the prevalence of these issues are in fact in darker sequences, some of them accrue in brightly lit (even outdoor) scenes as well. When not troubled by these issues, the transfer has a decent overall quality, though there are still issues with flicker and density fluctuation. Everything here is watchable, within certain confines, but there is certainly substantial room for improvement.
Though The Sicilian's insert lists only a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track, there is also a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track included as well. The 5.1 track significantly opens up David Mansfield's rather lushly romantic score, as well as providing a bit more nuance to some of the outdoor scenes where ambient environmental effects are utilized. Otherwise, both tracks offer good fidelity and reasonable dynamic range. There are occasional sync issues which in some cases seem attributable to less than artful ADR (it looks to my eye that Sukowa, who's German, was almost certainly dubbed, and none too well). Dialogue is presented cleanly, and there are no damage issues to report in this review.
This is the rare Shout! Factory release without any supplemental material of any kind.
I frankly never read The Sicilian, but one of the interesting things I discovered in doing some background research for this review is that evidently a little family named the Corleones are at least a part of Puzo's original version. Evidently copyright issues put the kibosh on their inclusion in the film adaptation, but it's frankly doubtful if even a character as memorable as Michael could have infused this haphazard enterprise with sufficient energy to make it more compelling. There's some lovely scenery here and an actually rather interesting foundational story, but a chaotic screenplay and some lackluster acting by Lambert defeat the film at virtually every turn. Video has some problematic patches but audio is fine for those considering a purchase.
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