Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Warner Movie ••••½ Picture ••½ Sound •••• Extras ••••

To celebrate John Wayne's 100th birthday, Warner has released a new two-disc Special Edition of one of his greatest westerns, Rio Bravo. The studio had already created a superb DVD of Howard Hawks's 1959 masterpiece back in 2001 - and in terms of the picture transfer, my preference is still for that earlier edition. With its smooth, rich, lustrous tones, it more closely resembles the fantastic Technicolor look of the original film. This new transfer is digitally hopped-up, with oversaturated, darker, harsher, and considerably more grainy images.

The mono sound is identical in both editions, which is to say top-notch. Buoyant and dynamic, it's fantastic for detecting all of Hawks's trademark character asides and overlapping dialogue. Dimitri Tiomkin's music thunders in all its bombastic glory, with reverberating gunshots nicely punctuating the din.

In terms of extras, the new edition - with a whole second disc of bonuses - easily outdoes the 2001 release. There's an entertaining commentary by mega-fan John Carpenter, whose own career has often shown the influence of Hawks (his Assault on Precinct 13 is virtually an updating of Rio Bravo). Carpenter also speaks his piece in a 35-minute featurette that's rife with great clips, and he does a fascinating job of tracing the film from rough outline to its 1959 theatrical debut. Fellow directors Peter Bogdanovich and Walter Hill offer choice observations, Hawks himself adds vintage sound bites, and Angie Dickinson (the movie's only surviving star), reveals many engaging tidbits regarding Hawks's working methods and the roughhouse camaraderie during filming.

Another featurette, Old Tucson: Where the Legends Walked, happily tips its hat to the instantly recognizable location of not only Rio Bravo but also Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Have Gun - Will Travel, El Dorado, and countless other cherished oaters. You also get the 1973 Hawks episode from the TV series The Men Who Made the Movies and a rousing collection of rarely seen Wayne trailers from his Warner Vitaphone days. [NR] English and French, Dolby Digital mono; letterboxed (1.78:1) and anamorphic widescreen; dual layer.

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