Wild Bill Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		2.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Wild Bill Blu-ray Movie Review

"It’s better to forget ya than regret ya."

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown February 7, 2024

Hot on the heels of 1993's now iconic western Tombstone, Kevin Costner's lesser take on the Dodge City lawman Wyatt Earp (1994), and the likes of Desperado and The Quick and the Dead came Walter Hill's Wild Bill, riding out of the dusty genre desert determined to gun down its competitors and emerge as the go-to gunslingin' western classic of the '90s. It did no such thing. Shot in the street like a dog, it was a bizarre, madcap yet weirdly dull bit of cinema that flashed the teeth of Natural Born Killers but lacked the bite of its compatriots and the power of the decade's best westerns, Oscar darlings Dances with Wolves (1990) and Unforgiven (1992). Jeff Bridges and Ellen Barkin are in perfect form, charmingly filling the boots of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane respectively, but the rest of the film is a wayward mess, lurching and stumbling in and out of firefights with splashes of disjointed style, cartoonish supporting performances, and more plotting problems than anyone has the time to endure.

Writer/director Walter Hill's western tale chronicles the latter-day exploits of one of the Old West's most colorful true-life legends. Gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Bridges) travels the frontier, gaining fame and enemies in roughly equal measure. Wherever the gruff gunslinger goes, men want to be him, women want to bed him, and some, trying to forge their own name and legacy, want a piece of him. Bill knows his glory days are fleeting, but he's determined to end his days fighting, gambling, drinking and facing any challenge a rival brings to his door. Calamity Jane (Ellen Barkin), his friend and sometime lover, is a legend of the Old West in her own right. Fiery and sexy, Jane has been hardened by a life in the American Frontier, but remains undeniably all woman. When Bill headlines for a traveling circus, he meets Susannah (Diane Lane), his one true love, but spurns her for the outlaw life. Years later, with his health deteriorating, Bill rides into Deadwood, South Dakota, as his past catches up to him in the form of young upstart Jack McCall (David Arquette), who's eager to be the man that puts a bullet in Bill's head. A notorious box office flop released in 1995, the film also stars John Hurt, James Remar, Keith Carradine, Christina Applegate, Marjoe Gortner, Bruce Dern, James Gammon, Steve Remar, Pato Hoffman, Lee de Broux, Steve Reevis, Dennis Hayden and Peter Jason.

Hill may be in the director's chair but Wild Bill plays like an Oliver Stone film, with Bridges and Barkin's work all the lesser for it. Style over substance isn't a new problem. Hill just gets lost in the weeds, working to create a piece of art where more pulp sensibilities would serve him better (a la Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead). His then-third western attempts to manifest the humor of Hill's 48 Hrs., the action of his Red Heat, and the presence of his own Geronimo. Not lacking in ambition, Wild Bill unfortunately struggles to maintain cohesion, feeling like an assemblage of three or four different films without ever really establishing its own personality or purpose. What exactly are we watching? A glimpse into the divide between truth and legend? A tall tale? A grounded western? Or a more meaningful drama that explores aging, diminishment and ego? Hill doesn't quite make a good case for any of them, resorting instead to a grab-bag hodgepodge of ideas that rarely coalesce and, more often than not, create a sense of detachment and disengagement that make the story less gripping and absorbing than it should be.

Miscastings abound too. Bridges and Barkin may be on point, followed close behind by Hurt and Remar, but Applegate is out of her depth, Dern is wasted, others are baffling one-dimensional caricatures of western folk, and Arquette, forced to play both foolish vendetta seeker and sharp-eyed threat, is too soft, silly and stilted to allow us to empathize with his plight. Its Bridges' intentional unlikability that accomplishes the heavy lifting for Arquette, although the script fails the young actor first, making it feel a bit mean-spirited to criticize his performance (which is clearly precisely what Hill was aiming for with Jack). If there's a saving grace it's in any adaptation of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane, two figures mentioned often in Old West lore but rarely explored. Bridges inhabits the wizened, health-challenged cowboy with clenched-jaw charisma and blazing-eyed rage (not to mention an amusing alcoholic tilt) and Barkin is more than eager to throw her legs in the air for a laugh, pop up two seconds later with real danger to her expression, and draw down soon after with the palpable sense that she'll kill a man as soon as bed him. It's all deliriously hit or miss of course, drifting in and out of screen sanity (with frustrating black-and-white flashbacks littering the cinematography), and Hill fails to take advantage of his best assets. Wild Bill isn't a bad film per se; just a strange, poorly constructed genre pic that jumps when it should take cover, fires when it should keep its guns holstered, and stands too still and stoically in its third act, an easy target for a bullet to the head.

Wild Bill Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Hoo boy. Sandpiper's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer, likely created from the same source as -- if not ported over directly from -- Twilight Time's previously released limited edition Blu-ray. Forget my take on the film. Wild Bill deserves better. A proper remaster would presumably bring out more of the grit and gristle of cinematographer Lloyd Ahern's work, which here is reduced to softer, tamer stuff. The image has been artificially sharpened to death, though that heavy-handed approach has only created the sense of clarity, rather than revealing detail present in the source elements. Textures are often muddled, grain is pulpy, edges sport halos, inky black levels are a boon that sadly lead to a lot of crush, and several shots look downright terrible. Measured as a whole, the picture quality bears the unmistakably last-generation look of a DVD-era upscale. Not entirely -- colors are richer, contrast packs more power, and there is a slight boost in overall detail compared to the film's DVDs -- but it's still not enough to call this a true high definition release. More distressing is the artifacts that haunt the grain field and the other (less detrimental) anomalies that pop up here and there. All told, Wild Bill looks bad. There's no doubt that if Twilight Time or Sandpiper had gone back to the original elements and created a true remaster, this would be one helluva Blu-ray presentation.

Wild Bill Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track Sandpiper delivers is far more commendable and easily the highlight of the disc. Voices are clean and clear, dialogue is always intelligible (other than a few times when an actor's line delivery is meant to be comically difficult to understand), and prioritization is solid, despite some overbearing music cues. Dynamics are strong as well, with nice, boomy LFE support and welcome weight that assists the action and gunfire. Likewise, the rear speakers make the most of crowded bars and busy town streets, along with plenty of directional effects and interior ambience that makes every hotel room and saloon sound fairly authentic. There are sequences that lean rather front-heavy when more involving sound design would have been appreciated, and moments when immersion gives way to the thinness of 1990s sound effects. But neither are all that distracting.

Wild Bill Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra included with Sandpiper's Blu-ray release of Wild Bill is the film's theatrical trailer.

Wild Bill Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Wild Bill is no Tombstone, but it could be. A precursor to excellent films like The Assassination of Jesse James (with which it shares more than a passing story structure), it struggles to define what it is, much less what it wants to accomplish. Hill seems better suited to the hustle and bustle of modern city streets. He may have a love for westerns and the legends that birthed the genre, but he doesn't quite have a handle on what makes a great western great. Sandpiper's Blu-ray release doesn't help matters. Its lossless audio track is a solid one, but its video presentation is a mess (the film obviously requires a proper remaster) and its supplemental package is bare. It's a hard pass from me, but if you love Wild Bill, the disc's price point may be tempting enough to draw you in.