Dead
In Tombstone
(2013/Universal Blu-ray w/DVD)/Shoot
The Sun Down (1976/Kino
Blu-ray)
Picture:
B- & C/B- Sound: B & B-/C+ Extras: C Films: C/C+
The
Western is so played out that doing one well is very difficult and
this started to happen in the 1960s. Here are two later examples
with their own issues...
Roel
Reine's Dead
In Tombstone
(2013) I almost being sold as a Western version of a Machete
film, but it is a plainer Revenge Western in which Danny Trejo is
betrayed by his fellow criminals and shot to death and that would be
the ned of it until Lucifer (Mickey Rourke, doing what he can with
his dialogue) gives him a chance for payback and sends him back to
the moral world to kill all six traitors who are bound for hell.
The
casting is good, but he script is not and besides being predictable,
it plays like Ghost
Rider
without any of the fun or energy. Anthony Michael Hall and Dina
Meyer also show up in the cast of many unknowns, but Western fans and
fans of the stars will want to give it a look. Otherwise, don;t
expect much if you are curious.
Extras
include Digital HD Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and iTunes
capable devices, while both disc versions add a feature length audio
commentary track, Deleted Scenes, Deleted Scenes Montage and Making
Of featurette, but the Blu-ray exclusively adds four more Making Of
featurettes: Horses, Guns & Explosions, Roel Reine: The
Leader Of The Gang, A Town Transformed and Creating
Hell: The VFX.
A
little more successful, David Leeds' Shoot
The Sun Down
(1976) has Christopher Walken as a cowboy outsider who gets involved
in a complex conflict that include Native Americans (led by a younger
man played by A Martinez), a crude treasure hunter (Geoffrey Lewis)
and an uppity man (Bo Brundin) who has managed to make a beautiful
young woman (Margot Kidder) some kind of indentured servant.
It
is deliberately slow, leisurely, paced to be natural and the script
does a decent job of juggling everything, but the resulting film is
uneven. The Native Americans look Hollywood fake, Lewis is playing
to type, the film is trying to make serious meaning often, but it
never works in that respect, but is in the mode of Revisionist
Westerns like Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Cimino's
Heaven's Gate (which Walken co-stars in). It deserves to be
in print, especially on Blu-ray and is at least ambitious, but I was
disappointed, yet it will make a great curio for fans of the genre
and the stars if nothing else.
Extras
include Stills, an Original Theatrical Trailer and more commercial
alternate opening of the film with a vocal song by Kinky Freeman and
less interesting retitle for the film.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Dead
and 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Sun
both have their different issues and even out as equally good, if not
great. The former is an HD shoot with heavily darkened styling to
emulate the Satanism in some shots and dirty old West
in most, while the latter was shot in real 35mm anamorphic Panavision
with naturalism in mind. The print shows the age of the materials
used, but we get some fine shots just the same. The
anamorphically enhanced Dead DVD is especially weak and soft, so skip
it.
As
for sonics, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
5.1 lossless mix on Dead
is very well designed, mixed and presented with occasionally
exceptional surround moments, a rich soundfield and only some
dialogue not up to par. A big surprise, even the lossy Dolby Digital
5.1 on the DVD version actually sounds good. The PCM
2.0 Mono on the Sun
obviously cannot compete with that, but is decent, though it shows
some wear, budget limits in the recording, harmonic distortion and
slight flaws you would expect from such a film its age.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
