7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 3.2 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.4 |
A POW from the U.S. leads a group mainly British prisoners to escape from the Germans in WWII.
Starring: Frank Sinatra, Trevor Howard, Raffaella Carrà, Brad Dexter, Sergio FantoniWar | 100% |
History | 59% |
Period | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: DTS 5.1
Spanish: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
Catalan: Dolby Digital Mono
German: DTS 5.1
Italian: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
Thai: Dolby Digital Mono
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Cantonese, Catalan, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Indonesian, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Exempted from military service during WWII—supposedly for a perforated ear drum and emotional instability—crooner/actor Frank Sinatra eventually
played soldier in a handful of films about the war, including From Here to Eternity, Kings Go Forth, and Von Ryan's Express.
The latter is one of his better movies; on paper it may play like a rip-off combination of 1963's The Great Escape and 1964's The Train
—and it does ape elements from both—but the 1965 adventure is plenty thrilling in its own right, tensely directed by Mark Robson and loosely based on
a novel by David Westheimer.
The film was an attempt by the ailing 20th Century Fox to reassert itself after the critical and financial disaster that was Cleopatra, and instead
of playing it safe—shooting on a lot, say, with a moderate budget—the studio doubled down and went big, filming exteriors on location in Italy,
constructing an enormous prison camp set, and engineering some impressive large-scale action set pieces. It paid off. Not only was Von Ryan's
Express a box office success that year, it holds up well today as an entertaining war thriller from the golden era of WWII-themed moviemaking.
If you're high off a viewing of the recently remastered Patton in glorious 70mm—as I am—you might be underwhelmed by the comparatively grubby Blu-ray transfer of Von Ryan's Express. Shot predominately using the Panavision system—with a few scenes in Fox's native CinemaScope—the film's 2.35:1 image is heavily grainy, so much so that the analog film noise affects the overall clarity of the picture. (On the plus side, there's no blatant DNR or edge enhancement here.) There are some shots where fine detail borders on impressive, but much of the time textures and outlines seem fuzzy and undefined. Color fares better, with a warm, rich palette, balanced skin tones, and good contrast. (Although the day-for-night scenes—as usual—look awful, with crushed shadow detail galore.) The source print isn't in bad shape, but there are noticeable white specks and abrasions in many scenes, and there occasionally appears to be some chroma/compression noise intermixed with the natural film grain. If you've seen the film on DVD you'll notice an all-around improvement, but it's not a drastic one, and I suspect Fox probably could've done a little more to get Von Ryan's Express in tip-top shape.
The film's original monoaural mix has been given a half-hearted multi-channel retrofitting, reworked into a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. I use the term "surround" loosely, because you rarely ever notice the rear speakers in action. At best, the sound from the front has been bled quietly into the surround channels; at worst, you'll hear nothing at all from back/sides. This is fine—purists needn't worry about jimmy-rigged sound effects stagily panned to the left or right—but it makes me wonder why Fox would even go to the trouble of making a 5.1 mix in the first place. Regardless, in terms of actual sound quality, the film isn't bad; there are some muffled/peaky moments early on in the prison camp sequence— the prisoners' yelling sounds quite harsh at times—but for a mid-1960s war movie, the mix has a good sense of impact and clarity. The film is notable for it's score—a classic-era Jerry Goldsmith production with martial rhythms and acute instrumentation—and it sounds better than ever here. The dialogue is always clean and easy to understand too. The disc includes a number of dub and subtitle options; see above for details.
If you own the film's previous DVD release, you'll be familiar with the extras offered here:
The 1960s and early '70s were crowded with excellent WWII-themed movies—The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen, The Longest Day, Tora! Tora! Tora!—and while Von Ryan's Express doesn't quite make it into this top tier, it's not far below. Tense and well-scripted, the film benefits from the incomparable coolness of Frank Sinatra, who isn't acting so much as he's simply being. Sourced from a heavily speckled and unusually grainy print, the Blu-ray doesn't have the visual wow-factor of last week's gorgeous Patton remaster, but the film at least looks better here than it did on DVD. Recommended for any and all fans of popcorn-variety World War II movies.
65th Anniversary Limited Edition
1957
Der Hauptmann
2017
1963
1961
2010
1967
2012
1968
2012
1964
1962
1969
1968
1965
1970
1976
1977
1955
Unrated Director's Cut
2005
2008