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

ADDITION: Criterion Blu-ray (October 2026): Criterion have transferred James Gray's Little Odessa to 4K UHD and Blu-ray. TLittle Odessa arrives on 4K UHD from Criterion in a new 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by James Gray. It is presented in 2160P with Dolby Vision HDR in its original 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The included Blu-ray, which our captures are taken from, is a strong presentation on its own. It is dual-layered with the feature given a max'ed out bitrate, and it is very film-like, with tight, natural grain. That matters for a film this dark. Richmond lets so much of the frame fall into black that a weak transfer would crush the shadows into murk. Here the blacks are deep and solid, and detail holds in the dimly lit apartments and night exteriors.

While we are in possession of the 4K UHD disc, we cannot resolve the encode yet, and therefore, cannot obtain screen captures. We hope to add to this review at some point in the future. So, the below captures are from Criterion's 2026 1080P Blu-ray transfer.

The 4K UHD improves in all the expected areas. Grain is finer and better resolved, and textures in faces and fabrics are more pronounced. The opening extreme close-up of Roth’s eye, half swallowed in darkness, is a good test, and the UHD extends the detail further into the shadow side. Dolby Vision gives the many low-light sequences more gradation between near-black and black. It adds a subtle lift to the highlights: the bokeh of streetlights, snow on the Brighton Beach sidewalks, the pinkish dusk skies. The palette of muted winter grays, warm interior lamplight and faded floral wallpaper looks richer without any boost to saturation. The image has excellent depth, and the restoration is pristine. It is a flawless presentation of a film that depends on its darkness, and the 4K UHD is the way to see it. The Blu-ray comes very close.

NOTE: We have added 52 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE.

On their Blu-ray and 4K UHD edition, Criterion use a DTS-HD Master DTS-HD Master 2.0 surround (a matrixed stereo mix) track at 24-bit. It is faithful to the film’s original design: dialogue is clean and clear, and the effects are used sparingly but carry weight in the moments of violence. The real beneficiary of the lossless track is the music. Gray uses Arvo Pärt’s “Sanctus” from the Berliner Messe and “Silouan’s Song,” along with Georgy Sviridov choral pieces sung by Slavyanka, the San Francisco Russian Chorus. They give the film the weight of a requiem, and the track lets the voices bloom with real depth and resonance. The émigré pop of Anatoly Mogilevsky and Vladimir Vysotsky in the background of the Brighton Beach scenes adds texture. The Russian dialogue carries burned-in English subtitles, as intended, while the brief exchanges in Yiddish are left unsubtitled. Optional English subtitles (SDH) are offered for the feature, and Gray’s commentary has its own optional subtitle track. Criterion's Blu-ray is Region 'A'-locked and the 4K UHD disc is, as always, Region FREE.

Criterion's video extras package are all housed on the included Blu-ray. On both discs they carry over the audio commentary from 2000 featuring James Gray, which has its own optional subtitles. Recorded only a few years after the film’s release, it captures Gray discussing his first feature: the Brighton Beach shoot, casting Roth, Redgrave and Schell, his influences, and the film’s fatalistic ending. Once Upon a Time . . . “Little Odessa” is a making-of documentary by David Thompson, produced for French television and running over 50 minutes. It is an excellent piece, with substantial participation from the filmmakers. New to this release is a 1/2-hour conversation between Gray and critic and podcaster Sean Fennessey, looking back on the film three decades on and placing it in the arc of his career through The Yards, We Own the Night, Two Lovers and Armageddon Time. The package includes a liner-notes essay by film critic Glenn Kenny (The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface – The Behind-the-Scenes History of a Legendary Hollywood Crime Drama,) and the new cover is by Michael Boland.

On the surface Little Odessa is a gangster picture, but James Gray is far less interested in the mechanics of the hit than in what is waiting for Joshua at home. The violence he practices for a living is presented as the inheritance of a household ruled by Arkady’s contempt. In that household the mother is fading and the youngest son is learning, by watching, how to become his brother. It is a Dostoevskian construct of guilt, exile and patrimony. Gray stages it with a classical restraint that was startling from a first-time director in the age of Tarantino imitators. Thirty years on, Little Odessa remains one of the most assured American debuts of the '90s and the clear template for everything Gray has made since. Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, The Hit, Meantime, Vincent & Theo, Youth Without Youth, Don't Come Knocking, Invincible, Chronic, Bergman Island) gives one of his most interior performances as the hooded, watchful Joshua, with Edward Furlong (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, American History X, Animal Factory) as the open nerve of the film and Moira Kelly (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me) as the girl he left behind. Brief Vanessa Redgrave (Blow-Up, Isadora, The Devils, A Man for All Seasons, Camelot, A Quiet Place in the Country, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Julia, Comrades, Howards End, Deep Impact, Atonement, The Day of the Triffids) and Maximilian Schell (Judgment at Nuremberg, The Young Lions, Return from the Ashes, The Deadly Affair, Krakatoa East of Java, The Odessa File, The Man in the Glass Booth, Cross of Iron, John Carpenter's Vampires), reunited from Julia, give the household its gravity: the dying mother and the self-pitying, tyrannical father whose contempt set everything in motion. DoP Tom Richmond (Palindromes, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Chopping Mall; camera operator on Repo Man and Monster) shoots the drained winter palette and swallowing shadows with real mastery, and the choral music of Arvo Pärt and Georgy Sviridov turns the story into a requiem. Criterion's director-approved 4K UHD, with Dolby Vision, is flawless, handling the film's very dark photography beautifully, and the included Blu-ray is excellent in its own right. Add Gray's commentary, the French making-of documentary, a new conversation with Sean Fennessey and Glenn Kenny's essay, and this is a superb package for a film that has long deserved one. This 4K UHD package get a strong recommendation.

Gary Tooze