NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (August 2025): Kino have transferred John G. Avildsen's Save the Tiger to Blu-ray. It is cited as from a "Brand New HD Master – From a 4K Scan of the 35mm Original Camera Negative". Image stability in this 1080P is excellent throughout, with no major encoding issues or age-related imperfections, ensuring a clean and immersive viewing experience on larger screens. John G. Avildsen employs an understated, observational style that emphasizes character over spectacle, allowing the story's intimacy to shine. The cinematography by James Crabe (The China Syndrome, The Karate Kid,Rocky) captures the gritty realism of 1970s Los Angeles - muted tones of beige, gray, and faded blues, sweaty offices, bustling fashion shows, and shadowy encounters - with a naturalistic palette that mirrors Harry's inner turmoil. Overall, the cinematography serves as a quiet visual metaphor for Harry's crumbling American Dream, blending beauty and decay in a character-driven frame that avoids the bombast of contemporary blockbusters. While some darker sequences reveal slightly better nuance detail and skin tones in older presentations, these discrepancies are minor, and the new scan preserves the film's gritty, documentary-like grain structure while delivering remarkable color reproduction and texture fidelity - from the sweat on Jack Lemmon's forehead to the faded urban landscapes of 1970s Los Angeles - making it the definitive visual upgrade for this character-driven drama. The HD presentation significantly enhances delineation, clarity, and overall sharpness over much older SD releases.

NOTE: We have added 42 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Kino use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (24-bit) in the original English language. The soundtrack, featuring jazz motifs, reinforces themes of nostalgia, while subtle visual symbolism (e.g., Harry's nightmares blending war and business) enhances the psychological depth. The Marvin Hamlisch (The Sting, The Swimmer, Take the Money and Run, The January Man, Behind the Candelabra, The Informant) score features a haunting opening with Bunny Berigan's trumpet rendition of "I Can't Get Started" (by Vernon Duke and Ira Gershwin), setting a melancholic tone that reflects Harry's stalled life - originally intended as "Mack the Knife" but substituted due to availability issues. Key source music draws heavily from big-band jazz era tunes to evoke Harry's longing for the past, including "Air Mail Special" (composed by Jim Mundy, Benny Goodman, and Charlie Christian), "Stompin' At The Savoy" (by Benny Goodman, Chick Webb, Andy Razaf, and Edgar Sampson), and various radio snippets spanning genres like country, classical, jazz, rock, and even "Deck the Halls" (a traditional Welsh air adapted by Hamlisch.) The original score incorporates arrangements like Johann Pachelbel's "Canon in D" (adapted by Noel Goemmanne and Jean-François Paillard for the main and end titles) and George Frideric Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" from Messiah (arranged by Hamlisch), used in subtle, emotional cues such as "Conrad’s Hallelujah" or reflective moments like "She Remembers Bucky in His Room." Dynamic range in the lossless is modest, as expected from a 1973 production focused on intimate conversations and ambient city noise rather than high-impact effects, but the track handles subtle nuances—like Harry's weary monologues and big-band radio snippets—with convincing fidelity and no meaningful discrepancies from previous releases. Kino offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-ray.

The extras on this Kino Blu-ray offer two audio commentaries: the first, ported from the 2005 DVD, features director John G. Avildsen and writer / producer Steve Shagan discussing production challenges, casting decisions, and thematic intentions with candid warmth and engaging rapport; the second is a new track by film historian Dwayne Epstein (Killin' Generals: The Making of The Dirty Dozen, the Most Iconic WW II Movie of All Time,) providing encyclopedic details on the film's context, cast and much more. Rounding out the package is the original theatrical trailer.

John G. Avildsen's Save the Tiger is a poignant drama that captures the disillusionment of post-war America through the lens of a single man's unraveling life. Released during the New Hollywood era, it reflects the period's focus on character-driven stories and social critique, blending elements of tragedy, nostalgia, and moral ambiguity. Save the Tiger delves into profound themes of nostalgia, ethical erosion, and the dark underbelly of the American Dream. Harry's fixation on the past - evoking icons like Tommy Dorsey's orchestra and baseball stars like Joe DiMaggio - contrasts sharply with his present moral compromises, symbolizing a broader societal shift from innocence to corruption in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate. The titular "tiger" serves as a metaphor for endangered nobility - Harry sees himself as a majestic creature on the verge of extinction, yet his actions reveal him as a caged, compromised figure. Broader societal commentary touches on generational divides, the futility of the counterculture, and the high cost of ambition, painting 1970s America as a landscape of unmanageable chaos where even "good citizens" resort to fraud. Kino's Blu-ray edition of Save the Tiger appears to be the definitive home video release for this underrated New Hollywood gem, boasting a film-like 4K-sourced transfer that elevates its visual authenticity and a reliable audio presentation that supports Jack Lemmon's Oscar-winning tour de force, making it essential viewing for those exploring the era's themes of moral decay and disillusionment. Certainly recommended.  

Gary Tooze