The Cossacks (1928/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)/Day Of The Mummy (2014/Image DVD)/The Day They Robbed The Bank Of England (1959/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)/I Am Soldier (2013/Inception DVD)/Stalingrad (1993/Arrow UK Region B Import Blu-ray)

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

PLEASE NOTE: The Cossacks and The Day They Robbed The Bank Of England DVDs are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series, while the 1993 Cossacks Import Blu-ray is now only available from our friends at Arrow UK and can only play on Blu-ray players that can handle Region B Blu-rays. All can be ordered from the links below.

Now for some new action films, most of which have some basis in historical conflict...

George Hill's The Cossacks (1928) has remarkably survived in the MGM collection of the Warner vaults and has been fully restored. John Gilbert (Queen Christina, The Big Parade, He Who Gets Slapped) is Lukashka, the son of a major player in the cossack world who wants peace and is hated for it. With more conflict coming up, he is trapped between his origins and his ideals as they battle Turks and he gets involved in romance. Based on the Tolstoi novel, there are some great set pieces, action sequences and going the extra mile or two, you can see why MGM became the #1 studio of the time, going all out in a still-remarkable fashion.

No, it is not a masterwork, but it is very well made, consistent, interesting and I liked it more without the new music score (which is fine, but not for me) as this is very well shot for its time and just about any time. You should see this one at least once.

There are no extras.

Johnny Tabor's Day Of The Mummy (2014) is one I hope to never see again. There is a joke at the beginning of George Romero's Diary Of The Dead (reviewed elsewhere on this site) where the student filmmakers are making a bad film about mummies that move as slow as zombies. It is amusing as it stands and is in itself an in-joke about bad zombie films being made at the time as well as any pseudo-imaginative variants. This lame production (which wastes Danny Glover in the oddest ways) is the horrid realization of that joke gone wrong... very wrong.

Then it also has endlessly awful shots of PC images that think they are cyber-slick as the characters deal with the killer title monster on the loose in Egypt, but this becomes obnoxious very quickly and the actual mummies are not as interesting or exciting (stretching the use of that word) as the art on the back of the box. Spending a say running around putting Band-Aid bandages on your friends for an afternoon would offer more fun and terror than this disaster.

There are no extras.

John Guillerman is known for his later hits like the 1976 King Kong, The Towering Inferno and high profile A-productions like The Blue Max and Death On The Nile, but he was always a solid director and you can see that clearly in the British heist film The Day They Robbed The Bank Of England (1959) with a script co-written by future James Bond film series master writer Richard Maibaum. With Peter O'Toole in a fine early turn as one of the Bank's guards (circa 1901) and a caper on whose participants are led by Aldo Ray, with the added idea that the Bank is not as protected as it should be and that the robbers have a motive connected to defending Ireland is all interesting and based on a true story of some kind. This film makes that mostly believable.

MGM's British division made the film and though it is not always lively and have flat or dated moments, the cast is good, it is well-directed, intelligent and has enough moments to still give it a look. I had not seen it in a long time and was impressed with how smart it still was. Fans of this kind of cinema should see this one at least once. Kieron Moore, Hugh Griffith, Elizabeth Sellars, Albert Sharpe, John Le Mesurier, Andrew Keir and an uncredited Charles Lloyd pack also star.

An Original Theatrical Trailer is the only extra.

Ronnie Thompson's I Am Soldier (2013) is a British drama that is partly a propaganda film (and tribute to) the Britain's Special Air Service (SAS), with Mickey (Tom Hughes) trying to be part of the elite outfit (think Navy SEALS) and seeing that not everyone makes it. This has some good scenes, a good cast and good moments, but part of the psychological training rings false and too simple/easy when you think about it and though it is still good viewing for its 88 minutes length, I was a bit disappointed as it started out so well.

The cast is a plus including Noel Clarke, Lee Charles, George Russo, Alex Reed, Joe Egan, Mike Fury and Philip Desmeules are a plus to keep this going. Those curious should give it a look.

An Original Theatrical Trailer is the only extra.

Joseph Vilsmaier's Stalingrad (1993) is not the overblown, recent action big-budget 2013 mess (reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) a Russian studio recently produced. Wanting to be a variant of Peterson's Das Boot (reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site), the film deals with Nazi soldiers going into the famed Soviet Union city to break the country and take it over, but even with their ability to kill (and they do) soon discover Stalin has a few ugly surprises for them as he even is sacrificing his own people to stop them.

I always had a few issues with this film trying to not deal with the Nazi side of this as explicitly as it could despite some good action sequences and graphic violence that the film needed, though this is apparently a few minutes short of the longest cut of the film. Whether that would make much of a difference or make up for the shortcomings here, though the lack of CGI is a big plus from its original release and the production design is well done. Thomas Kretschmann, who showed up in that later film in vain, is the most successful actor in the cast, a cast that did pretty good. I have mixed feelings about this one, but it should be in print and glad it made it to Blu-ray.

A Making Of featurette is the only extra.

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 High Definition image transfer can on Stalingrad has more character and realistic quality than the overly digital, phony 2003 version, but this new HD master has some detail issues throughout that hold back the overall quality as detail and depth come up short just a little too often. Turns out there is some controversy on this one, so we'll see where that goes, but it is enough that most of the DVDs here can compete, from the impressive 1.33 X 1 black and white transfers on Cossacks and 2.00 X 1 black & white MetroScope image on Bank, to the anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Soldier. That leaves the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Mummy the soft loser.

As for sound, the PCM 2.0 Stereo on the Stalingrad Blu-ray has some Pro Logic surrounds and is just a little fuller than any of the DVD entries, making it the sonic champ. It is a mixed success in playback, but it is lossless enough to get more out of it than you would think. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Cossacks (with its newly recorded instrumental score) and Bank (sounding cleaner and clearer than expected), along with the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Soldier and Mummy (which also has a lesser lossy Dolby 2.0 Stereo track for some reason) tie for second/last place sonically. Soldier could sound better if it were lossless, but Mummy is lucky it sounds as good as it does.

You can order the 1993 Cossacks Region B import DVD from Arrow UK Films at this link...

http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/

… and to order either of the Warner Archive DVDs, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:

https://www.warnerarchive.com/

- Nicholas Sheffo