Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Walking Tall Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 15, 2018

If your name were Buford Hayse Pusser, you’d probably walk around with a large wooden implement to keep potential bullies in line, too, wouldn’t you? 1973’s Walking Tall, supposedly based on the real life adventures of a Tennessee sheriff named, yep, Buford Pusser who was armed with, yep, a large wooden four by four, was an unexpected hit (no pun intended) and gave star Joe Don Baker arguably his best remembered role (the original film doesn’t appear to have had a standalone release on Blu-ray domestically, but it’s available as part of Walking Tall: The Trilogy). While the 2004 remake of Walking Tall kind of oddly changes its hero’s name from Buford Pusser to Chris Vaughn (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), kind of interestingly the real life Pusser was evidently a wrestler, like Johnson himself, before he opted for a career in law enforcement. Other changes are afoot in this remake, including a change of locale from the American South to the American Northwest (Canada’s British Columbia standing in for the state of Washington), and the underlying criminal activity switched from moonshine to illicit drugs.

Walking Tall has had a couple of previous releases on Blu-ray, and rather than rehash the plot dynamics of this version, I’ll refer those interested to my colleague Ken Brown’s Walking Tall Blu-ray review of the first Metro Goldwyn Mayer release.

Walking Tall Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Walking Tall is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual's new MVD Marquee Collection imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. I'm not certain whether or not this was culled from the same master that Ken assessed in his review linked above, but at least some of the same issues Ken mentions are in evidence here, and MVD has been up front about licensing previously released masters and/or making new masters well publicized, so my hunch is this is based on the same master (if anyone has authoritative information to the contrary, private message me and I'll happily update the review). That said, the MGM release featured the even then "elderly" MPEG-2 codec, and this disc features an AVC encode, as mentioned above, and with that "new, improved" codec and a BD-50, I didn't personally notice some of the compression anomalies that Ken mentioned in his review. I also personally didn't notice a whale of a lot of damage, as Ken evidently did, but there are some rather odd moments of minor blemishes dotting the proceedings that cropped up intermittently, something that does seem a little odd (as Ken mentioned) for a film of such relatively recent vintage. The whole presentation has a kind of "video" like quality, even though there is definitely a noticeable grain field, especially in some of the outdoor scenes, where it can be more easily spotted against some of the brighter backgrounds. The biggest deficit to me personally was a somewhat variable looking palette. Some of the outdoor material pops rather well, at least in terms of blues and reds, but there are moments of this transfer that are decidedly on the brown side.

Walking Tall Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Walking Tall ups the audio ante from the MGM version by having both a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and an LPCM 2.0 mix available in English, along with the foreign language tracks previously offered. Both mixes get the job done rather efficiently, with the surround mix understandably opening up things like the often thundering score or some of the outdoor ambient environmental effects. Some of the crowded casino scenes also feature considerably more immersion than the stereo version. All elements are offered with fine fidelity and no issues whatsoever.

Walking Tall Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson


• Audio Commentary by Director Kevin Bray, Editor Robert Ivison and Director of Photography Glen Macpherson


• Fight the Good Fight (480i; 8:44) focuses on stunts.


• Bloopers (480i; 00:48)


• Alternate Ending: The Porch (480i; 1:20)


• Photo Gallery (1080i) hasn't been authoried with a timecode, but it does advance automatically, so have your Pause button handy if you're perusing any given photo. I also couldn't get the disc to "move on" after the last image and needed to press Top Menu to return to the navigation pane.


• Deleted Scenes

  Black Jack (480i; 00:49)

  He Hurts People (480i; 00:17)

  It's Not Your Fault (480i; 00:34)



• Trailers includes Walking Tall (1080p; 1:16) along with several other MVD releases.

Note 1: All of the standard definition supplements are windowboxed.

Note 2: The disc has been authored just a little clunkily in my estimation. Once a selection has been made on the Main Menu, the Submenu "pops up" and stays there, just cycling through the choices on that Submenu without providing a clear way to "exit" (pressing Pop Up or Top Menu had variable results). Therefore, it can be a bit of a challenge to get to other choices. And while this could have been a PowerDVD glitch, when I was checking the resolutions of the supplements and attempted to use the program's "Top Menu" choice to get out of this very Submenu "loop", the disc stopped. Kind of weirdly, however, at the end of each of the brief Deleted Scenes detailed above, the disc booted back out to the Main Menu rather than staying in the Extras submenu.

Walking Tall Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you're a fan of The Rock and/or this version of the film, this new MVD Marquee Collection version is arguably the one to get. While the video looks fairly similar to the lackluster former release (going solely by screenshots and Ken's description, so caveats as needed), if arguably marginally improved, there are more audio options here and MVD has ported all of the supplements to the Blu-ray disc, making switching to the DVD (as outlined in Ken's review) unnecessary.