It's nice to see another western hit Hollywoodland, and although I don't rate this effort anywhere near the caliber of 3:10 to Yuma it does have some redeeming features. I suspect that my major complaint is that it is overly long - spending an inordinate amount of camera time trying to read Pitt's non-existent facial cues. It tries hard to report factual details - of which I am sure most are very accurate, but it can't help promoting and slanting in expected directions. For straight historical value though it is educational for sure - maybe that's the best attribute.

The dual-layered, progressive Warner DVD (anamorphic 2.35:1 ratio) looks very good... with but a few limitations. Again I am seeing what I perceive as SD weaknesses - less than vibrant color representation but detail is exceptional and considering the, over 2 1/2 hour, film shares the DVD with no supplements (and fills almost 8 Gig of the disc) it is probably as strong as it will appear on Standard DVD. I saw no post-production manipulation. In fact digital noise is also very limited and, of course, the print is super clean. I think the caps below give a very fair representation of how the DVD image looks. It is very strong overall. Audio is a standard 5.1 and it sounded terrific when called upon - there are 2 foreign language DUBs if required plus optional subtitles.

The film is better than I may have represented in the opening paragraph and the best thing about this DVD is the price - it's worth every penny (about $16) even though there are no extra features. Of this I am quite surprised but the overly-long film is surely enough to sate most fans - you get enough historical detail with added mini-bio/featurettes. The film is probably too long for a commentary as well. I'll comment on the high-definition versions as we obtain them, but I expect that will surpass in visual appearance. If so - they should be very good.

Gary W. Tooze