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Category:    Home > Reviews > Gangster > Drama > Thriller > Crime > Murder > Drugs > Urban > Hitman > The Brotherhood (1968/Paramount/Warner Archive DVD)/Bullet To The Head (2013/Warner Blu-ray w/DVD)/The Don Is Dead (1973/Universal/Umbrella Region Free PAL Import DVD)

The Brotherhood (1968/Paramount/Warner Archive DVD)/Bullet To The Head (2013/Warner Blu-ray w/DVD)/The Don Is Dead (1973/Universal/Umbrella Region Free PAL Import DVD)

 

Picture: C+/B & C+/C     Sound: C+/B & C+/C     Extras: D/C-/D     Films: C/C+/C+

 

 

PLEASE NOTE: The Don Is Dead Region Free Import PAL DVD is only available from Umbrella Entertainment and can be ordered at the link below.

 

 

Now for three gangster crime dramas made the old-fashioned way…

 

 

Paramount had big hopes for Martin Ritt’s The Brotherhood (1968) and thought it would be a major gangster crime drama critically and commercially.  Ritt was more hit than miss and his Spy Who Came In From The Cold did well for the studio, though his follow-up Hombre did not fare as well.  Still, they had Kirk Douglas as a head Sicilian mobster, backed by a cast that included Alex Cord, Irene Pappas, Susan Strasberg, Luther Adler, Joe De Santis, Murray Hamilton, Val Avery, Val Bisoglio and Barry Primus.  Lewis John Carino (Frankenheimer’s brilliant Seconds) even wrote the screenplay.  So It should have worked, right?

 

Wrong!  The film is a mixed run on with half the cast miscast, the writing droning on and on, the gangsters never seeming totally Italian (and this is pre-Godfather) and Ritt was clearly out of his depth.  People talk at each other, the pace is off, it never finds its center, it becomes unintentionally funny a few times, but not enough to stop it from being a bore and Hollywood took it as a sign that gangster films were dead, so many spoofs followed despite the commercial success the year before of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie & Clyde.  Even with decent cinematography by two Directors of Photography in Ritt’s editor Frank Bracht (his only major DP work, the film was issued in dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor) and Boris Kaufmann (12 Angry Men, The Pawnbroker, Uptight), the film was a bust.

 

Even Lalo Schifrin’s score could not bring this sometimes-snoozer to life and 45 years later, it has aged even worse than when it arrived and though the actors are trying, they cannot save it either.  Of course, all moved on to more work and success as the film was forgotten (especially after the first Godfather launched a new gangster craze) and now it is a lame curio that was on a list of duds that almost led to studio owner Gulf + Western closing the studio division, which thankfully did not happen.

 

There are no extras.

 

 

Though Walter Hill’s Bullet To The Head (2013) is a brand new film, it more than belongs in the same text as the two older gangster films here.  Hill is from the last generation of gritty Hollywood filmmakers who has been a longtime producer on the Alien franchise and wrote hits for other directors as well as for himself.  Films like Hard Times, 48 HRS., Red Heat, Last Man Standing and the atypical Supernova (which he had his name removed from) show a filmmaking survivor not too many people know of, but he can make a good film.

 

We may get newer gangsters, but the hitman tale here has more than enough interesting moments for serious action fans to check it out even when it does not always work.  Sylvester Stallone is an elder hitman in New Orleans who is out to avenge a killing when it gets personal.  He lands up having to deal with a young, naïve cop (Sung Kang, very badly wasted here) as he tries to find out who hired a new hitman (the underrated Jason Momoa (Conan The Barbarian) replacing the underrated Thomas Jane (The Punisher) in a film that needed both actors badly) at any cost.

 

Jimmy (Stallone) is quick to kill anyone in his way because he is sadly correct that he is dealing with killers who will shoot first and not care about anything, but this idea is never as effective as it was in Christopher McQuarrie’s Jack Reacher (2012) with Tom Cruise, which was a bit of a better film, but both share similar problems.  I never totally bought the politically incorrect disposition of either antagonist, action sequences are good, but not always great or memorable and the older-styled aspects of the stories do not gel well with the modern times.  Stallone’s racial comments (especially towards Kang) never work as jokes or convincing dialogue, so the film is at its best in the action sequences.  In addition, Momoa is not on screen nearly long enough, which hurts the film in the long run.

 

Still, the film looks really good and was 100% shot on 35mm film, which Hill knows how to push and make look great.  Even his stylizing choices never interfere with the quality of the image and this is one of the last films that will ever be totally shot on Fuji 35mm film since it was discontinued by early 2013.  Too bad it was not better, but the look will age well and this is bound to become a curio down the line.  For action fans, it is definitely worth a look.

 

The only extra is a Making Of featurette that lasts just over 9 minutes.

 

 

Finally we have Richard Fleischer’s The Don Is Dead (1973) which was made by Universal as a way to capture the blockbuster success of Coppola’s first Godfather film.  The story can be similar, making it too an urban western of sorts, but it has a more straight forward style that combines the U.S. crime action film of the time with some aspects of the harder, more violent Italian Crime films that tended to be bloodier and more graphic.

 

The cast includes Anthony Quinn, Robert Forster, Fredrick Forrest, Al Lettieri, Angel Tompkins, Charles Cioffi, Barry Russo, Sid Haig, Abe Vigoda and Vic Tayback, who was in his final years of being exclusively a tough guy character actor.  That cast works better than The Brotherhood, but still has its limits and still does not age as well as Coppola’s first two Godfather’s but everyone gives great performances, Quinn is more effective as a Don than Kirk Douglas, the Forster/Forrest pairing is pretty good (though Forrest sounds, intentionally or not, more like a young Marlon Brando than maybe he should) and it has aged decently if not greatly.

 

Gangster genre fans should see it at least once, plus it is a nicely shot film and the Jerry Goldsmith score is another plus the film has going for it.  It may not be a genre classic, but it is a solid urban drama.  This was Fleischer’s follow up to Soylent Green and so he was coming off of one of his best films and that is why it is still more watchable than it might be otherwise, no matter how derivative.  It should be more of a curio by now, but for some reason, is not and should be.  Nice to have it on DVD.

 

There are no extras.

 

 

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Bullet (as noted, was an all 35mm Fuji Film shoot, then printed on Kodak film where applicable) is the visual champ as expected, but color and definition reproduction is so ahead of most HD Digital shoots, especially in the genre, that watching the film is a pleasure all around and one of the best Blu-ray releases this year.  The anamorphically enhanced DVD version is soft by comparison, but is passable and equal to the anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on The Brotherhood DVD which has a print that shows its age at times, but has decent color throughout.

 

Like Brotherhood, Don was also issued in dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor 35mm prints, but this 1.85 X 1 copy is darker, less colorful and detail-challenged so it is sadly not a great representation of the fine camera work Director of Photography Richard H. Kline (The Andromeda Strain, The Boston Strangler, Camelot, De Palma’s The Fury, Soylent Green) brought to the film, which has more of a big screen look to it than Brotherhood, despite that film’s print looking more like real Technicolor.  Both deserve Blu-ray releases.

 

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is on Bullet can be a little bit towards the front speakers here and there, but has a fine, solid, warm, consistent, well-recorded soundfield throughout and remains surprisingly consistent throughout in line with the best of Hill’s film mixes.  The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on the DVD is not bad, but no match for the DTS on the Blu-ray by any means.  The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the two DVDs are not as good, as expected, but Don tends to be a generation down sonically and can be hard to hear dialogue-wise, so be careful of volume switching and high levels of playback.

 

 

 

To order The Don Is Dead import DVD, go to this link:

 

http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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