It's a curious combination of realism and romantic idealism, but somehow it works.
This Western comes with a liberal dose of realism, so you'll see things that you don't see in other movie yarns, like a man urinating in the bushes, pulling ticks off a companion, or stitching up someone's forehead with a curved buckskin needle. It's also infused with plenty of colorful characters with colorful names like Big Ears, Big Rump Kate, Fox-Hide Brine, or Captain Billy Fender. But the road that this group traveled could have had a few more twists and turns in it to add interest. Sometimes, things seem to resolve themselves too easily or too directly, with no real repercussions, obstacles, or complications until a an ex-con and his gang come into the picture.
The plot itself is simple. Print and Tom run across a man in a wagon who's bringing the Chinese girls to Big Rump Kate (Rusty Schwimmer), the rough madam of a mining camp whorehouse. In the go-figure department, this man drugs them and scoots with some of their best horses and just one of the girls, whom he's "spoiled." But the heroes get after him and dispense frontier justice, leaving them as custodians of the girls. At times, it seems as if Hill couldn't decide how much time to spend on the cross-cultural character encounter and how much to stay "on story." So it becomes a double trail film: get the horses to the buyers, and get the girls to a safe place, with plenty of chatty moments during which we learn about the characters' pasts--especially after another prostitute (Greta Scacchi) joins their group for her own safety.
Video:
My only complaint about the DVD was that some scenes could have sported higher black levels, and that's the case with the Blu-ray as well. Some scenes look a little "soft," while others almost seem washed-out because of too much light. But the level of detail is good on this 1080p 50-gig disc (AVC MPEG-4 codec, 1.78:1 aspect ratio). The colors were fully saturated, and there's very little grain. The black level might have been stronger in some scenes and there's a flatness in others, but overall it's a decent picture.
Audio:
The DVD featured a robust English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, and to tell the truth I really couldn't tell much difference between that and the English or French Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio that's on the Blu-ray. It's just not as dynamic as you'd expect, with the rear speakers pretty inactive for most of the film. Additional options are Portuguese and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, with subtitles in French, Arabic, Dutch, English, Bahasa, English SDH, Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Extras:
There's really just one extra: an AMC promo feature titled "'Broken Trail': The Making of a Legendary Western." In it, we see the writer, director, and stars talking about the film and filming process, and learn that the stories were cobbled together based on a number of true stories from the Old West. And yes, there really was a fellow like Smallpox Bob. As features go, it's decent but short (around 20 minutes).
Bottom Line: There's action in "Broken Trail" and some moments that will make you wince, but by and large, it's a pretty low-key film which delivers solid entertainment for Western lovers. As I said, it's a curious combination of realism and romantic idealism, but somehow it works.
The plot itself is simple. Print and Tom run across a man in a wagon who's bringing the Chinese girls to Big Rump Kate (Rusty Schwimmer), the rough madam of a mining camp whorehouse. In the go-figure department, this man drugs them and scoots with some of their best horses and just one of the girls, whom he's "spoiled." But the heroes get after him and dispense frontier justice, leaving them as custodians of the girls. At times, it seems as if Hill couldn't decide how much time to spend on the cross-cultural character encounter and how much to stay "on story." So it becomes a double trail film: get the horses to the buyers, and get the girls to a safe place, with plenty of chatty moments during which we learn about the characters' pasts--especially after another prostitute (Greta Scacchi) joins their group for her own safety.
Video:
My only complaint about the DVD was that some scenes could have sported higher black levels, and that's the case with the Blu-ray as well. Some scenes look a little "soft," while others almost seem washed-out because of too much light. But the level of detail is good on this 1080p 50-gig disc (AVC MPEG-4 codec, 1.78:1 aspect ratio). The colors were fully saturated, and there's very little grain. The black level might have been stronger in some scenes and there's a flatness in others, but overall it's a decent picture.
Audio:
The DVD featured a robust English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, and to tell the truth I really couldn't tell much difference between that and the English or French Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio that's on the Blu-ray. It's just not as dynamic as you'd expect, with the rear speakers pretty inactive for most of the film. Additional options are Portuguese and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, with subtitles in French, Arabic, Dutch, English, Bahasa, English SDH, Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Extras:
There's really just one extra: an AMC promo feature titled "'Broken Trail': The Making of a Legendary Western." In it, we see the writer, director, and stars talking about the film and filming process, and learn that the stories were cobbled together based on a number of true stories from the Old West. And yes, there really was a fellow like Smallpox Bob. As features go, it's decent but short (around 20 minutes).
Bottom Line: There's action in "Broken Trail" and some moments that will make you wince, but by and large, it's a pretty low-key film which delivers solid entertainment for Western lovers. As I said, it's a curious combination of realism and romantic idealism, but somehow it works.
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[release]23622[/release]