Wyatt Earp (Blu-ray)
APPROX. 190 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1994 - MPA RATING: PG-13
" I liked Wyatt Earp, but I found it hard to sit through the entire film.
Is "Wyatt Earp" better or worse than "Tombstone?" This is a question that comes up frequently, but it truly is like comparing apples to oranges. "Tombstone" is a big-budget Hollywood action film with overly animated characters and a fast moving story. It is intended to entertain and does exactly that. "Wyatt Earp" is supposed to be the emotional and personal cataloging of the man´s life and throws aside big budget action sequences and catchy dialogue for an attempt at historical accuracy. To compare the two almost feels equivalent to comparing "2001: A Space Odyssey" to "Star Wars." You can compare them, but they are two entirely different films with entirely different purposes. I may enjoy "Wyatt Earp" more than "Tombstone" as an overall product, but if I want to sit down and just relax to a fun Western, then I´d go for Tombstone.
"Wyatt Earp" is a fine film with a tremendous attention to detail. There is no denying that Costner and Kasden found a love affair with the lawman. With Costner, Quaid, Gene Hackman, Jeff Fahey, Mark Harmon, Michael Madsen, Bill Pullman, Tom Sizemore, Tea Leoni, James Caviezel, Adam Baldwin and other familiar faces lending their talents to the film, this is a wonderful ensemble cast that could have been deserving of something a little more epic and entertaining, but they intended to create a history lesson and history lessons are not supposed to be exhilarating. It´s slow, but it is purposeful. The Wild West as imagined by Kasden is a beautiful place to be and Wyatt Earp was a driven and flawed man who loved money when he lost the love of a woman. If you want excitement, then I would point you in another direction. If you want to watch a film that strives to be historically accurate, then "Wyatt Earp" might be worth your time and money investment.
Video:
"Wyatt Earp" is delivered to retail outlets on the same day as the 1969 Sam Peckinpah Western, "The Wild Bunch." This 1994 film looks decent in high definition, but its VC-1 mastering cannot quite stack up and compare to a film twenty five years older. Detail of this 2.40:1 film is solid. Colors are good, but the transfer is both inconsistent and not nearly as impressive as the Western it shares shelve space with. Whereas there was a little edge enhancement issues in "The Wild Bunch," "Wyatt Earp" is riddled with heavy amounts of halos and these can be viewed throughout much of the film and against the almost always black-clad Earp. Black levels were weak at times and showed definite gradients against backgrounds and weakened shadow detail. There were visible instants of film grain, but it was not overly distracting. The picture quality was still not bad, with overly strong amount of detail and vivid and nicely saturated colors, but the digital flaws outweighed the benefits. Part of the problem certainly rested in the fact that I watched the two films back-to-back and was simply blown away by "The Wild Bunch" and not very impressed with "Wyatt Earp."
Sound:
The sound quality of "Wyatt Earp" was at least on par with "The Wild Bunch." This is a very long film at 190 minutes and it does have some supplemental materials that would create quite a challenge to include a high definition Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix or an Uncompressed PCM soundtrack. There is only so much room on a 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray disc. The included Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack sounds pretty good. There are nice moments where the James Newton Howard theatrical score sounds warm and fills the room. Ambient sounds are found throughout the film and helps create a hectic feeling saloon or unruly crowd. A few gunshots can be heard ringing in the rear channels. Still, the majority of sound populates only the front three channels and the rears are often ignored. Dialogue is strong and very clear, which is an improvement over "The Wild Bunch" and its Dolby Digital soundtrack. Bass representation in the low frequency effects channel is decent. Direction across channels is sound, with movement from left to right (and visa versa) clean and efficient. Had "Wyatt Earp" been a little more enveloping in its presence, it would have been quite an experience. It isn´t a bad soundtrack, but just feels like it is doing enough to get by.
Extras:
"Wyatt Earp" comes equipped with about forty five minutes of additional footage. Under the "Behind the Story" section, two documentaries are included. It Happened That Way: Behind-the-Scenes Documentary (14:03) is a relatively short documentary that challenges the .1 LFE channel, but stays constrained to a 4:3 aspect ratio. This piece feels overly promotional and suffers from the usual back-patting of EPK featurettes, but the doc does look at some nice moments with Lawrence Kasdan, Costner and others and what went on behind the scenes. The second documentary, Walk with a Legend: Vintage making-of TV special. (22:41) is narrated by Tom Skerret. This is another promotional piece looking at "Wyatt Earp" and I´m not sure of what is so vintage about it, considering it is about as old as the first documentary. This was a little nicer than the first documentary and did look more into the genre and the legends. Before the "Additional Footage," the Theatrical Trailer is thrown in.
There are eleven Lifted Scenes (17:58) that can be played individually or collectively. Many of these are simply character building moments, but a few of the scenes do add more to the story. A little more backstory is included to Wyatt´s relationships with Josie and Urilla. Some times is spent with his buffalo skinning profession. My favorite scene was a moment with Doc and Wyatt in a jail. I thought that Dennis Quaid´s performance was stellar and enjoyed another moment with him here. Overall, the scenes contain nothing groundbreaking or game-changing and the 190 minute film certainly did not need another eighteen minutes added to it. There are nice to sit through and easily the nicest offering on this disc.
Closing Comments:
"Wyatt Earp" was the second of two epic Westerns from Warner Bros. I watched on Blu-ray in one very long afternoon. This three-hour plus movie took me into the evening hours and although I was entertained, I certainly could not put this film in the same class as the Sam Peckinpah movie. The ensemble cast is good and I don´t feel that Costner deserved the Razzy for his performance. The most impressive cast member was Dennis Quaid. His turn as Doc Holliday was the best portrayal of the character I can remember and he outclasses the work done by Kilmer in the more popular "Tombstone." This is a long and trodding historical look at the life and times of Wyatt Earp and where the film succeeds in taking a deeper look at the life of Earp, it fails in doing so in a slow and tedious manner. The Blu-ray release has a nicely detailed and colorful transfer that is marred with problems in its digital transfer. The soundtrack is thin, but manages to get by. The supplements are not that impressive and weigh in at only about forty five minutes of bonus materials. They feel overly promotional and does not lend much to the package. Overall, this is still the best version of "Wyatt Earp" on the market (tied with the identical HD-DVD release), but far from being the best Western.
"Wyatt Earp" is a fine film with a tremendous attention to detail. There is no denying that Costner and Kasden found a love affair with the lawman. With Costner, Quaid, Gene Hackman, Jeff Fahey, Mark Harmon, Michael Madsen, Bill Pullman, Tom Sizemore, Tea Leoni, James Caviezel, Adam Baldwin and other familiar faces lending their talents to the film, this is a wonderful ensemble cast that could have been deserving of something a little more epic and entertaining, but they intended to create a history lesson and history lessons are not supposed to be exhilarating. It´s slow, but it is purposeful. The Wild West as imagined by Kasden is a beautiful place to be and Wyatt Earp was a driven and flawed man who loved money when he lost the love of a woman. If you want excitement, then I would point you in another direction. If you want to watch a film that strives to be historically accurate, then "Wyatt Earp" might be worth your time and money investment.
Video:
"Wyatt Earp" is delivered to retail outlets on the same day as the 1969 Sam Peckinpah Western, "The Wild Bunch." This 1994 film looks decent in high definition, but its VC-1 mastering cannot quite stack up and compare to a film twenty five years older. Detail of this 2.40:1 film is solid. Colors are good, but the transfer is both inconsistent and not nearly as impressive as the Western it shares shelve space with. Whereas there was a little edge enhancement issues in "The Wild Bunch," "Wyatt Earp" is riddled with heavy amounts of halos and these can be viewed throughout much of the film and against the almost always black-clad Earp. Black levels were weak at times and showed definite gradients against backgrounds and weakened shadow detail. There were visible instants of film grain, but it was not overly distracting. The picture quality was still not bad, with overly strong amount of detail and vivid and nicely saturated colors, but the digital flaws outweighed the benefits. Part of the problem certainly rested in the fact that I watched the two films back-to-back and was simply blown away by "The Wild Bunch" and not very impressed with "Wyatt Earp."
Sound:
The sound quality of "Wyatt Earp" was at least on par with "The Wild Bunch." This is a very long film at 190 minutes and it does have some supplemental materials that would create quite a challenge to include a high definition Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix or an Uncompressed PCM soundtrack. There is only so much room on a 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray disc. The included Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack sounds pretty good. There are nice moments where the James Newton Howard theatrical score sounds warm and fills the room. Ambient sounds are found throughout the film and helps create a hectic feeling saloon or unruly crowd. A few gunshots can be heard ringing in the rear channels. Still, the majority of sound populates only the front three channels and the rears are often ignored. Dialogue is strong and very clear, which is an improvement over "The Wild Bunch" and its Dolby Digital soundtrack. Bass representation in the low frequency effects channel is decent. Direction across channels is sound, with movement from left to right (and visa versa) clean and efficient. Had "Wyatt Earp" been a little more enveloping in its presence, it would have been quite an experience. It isn´t a bad soundtrack, but just feels like it is doing enough to get by.
Extras:
"Wyatt Earp" comes equipped with about forty five minutes of additional footage. Under the "Behind the Story" section, two documentaries are included. It Happened That Way: Behind-the-Scenes Documentary (14:03) is a relatively short documentary that challenges the .1 LFE channel, but stays constrained to a 4:3 aspect ratio. This piece feels overly promotional and suffers from the usual back-patting of EPK featurettes, but the doc does look at some nice moments with Lawrence Kasdan, Costner and others and what went on behind the scenes. The second documentary, Walk with a Legend: Vintage making-of TV special. (22:41) is narrated by Tom Skerret. This is another promotional piece looking at "Wyatt Earp" and I´m not sure of what is so vintage about it, considering it is about as old as the first documentary. This was a little nicer than the first documentary and did look more into the genre and the legends. Before the "Additional Footage," the Theatrical Trailer is thrown in.
There are eleven Lifted Scenes (17:58) that can be played individually or collectively. Many of these are simply character building moments, but a few of the scenes do add more to the story. A little more backstory is included to Wyatt´s relationships with Josie and Urilla. Some times is spent with his buffalo skinning profession. My favorite scene was a moment with Doc and Wyatt in a jail. I thought that Dennis Quaid´s performance was stellar and enjoyed another moment with him here. Overall, the scenes contain nothing groundbreaking or game-changing and the 190 minute film certainly did not need another eighteen minutes added to it. There are nice to sit through and easily the nicest offering on this disc.
Closing Comments:
"Wyatt Earp" was the second of two epic Westerns from Warner Bros. I watched on Blu-ray in one very long afternoon. This three-hour plus movie took me into the evening hours and although I was entertained, I certainly could not put this film in the same class as the Sam Peckinpah movie. The ensemble cast is good and I don´t feel that Costner deserved the Razzy for his performance. The most impressive cast member was Dennis Quaid. His turn as Doc Holliday was the best portrayal of the character I can remember and he outclasses the work done by Kilmer in the more popular "Tombstone." This is a long and trodding historical look at the life and times of Wyatt Earp and where the film succeeds in taking a deeper look at the life of Earp, it fails in doing so in a slow and tedious manner. The Blu-ray release has a nicely detailed and colorful transfer that is marred with problems in its digital transfer. The soundtrack is thin, but manages to get by. The supplements are not that impressive and weigh in at only about forty five minutes of bonus materials. They feel overly promotional and does not lend much to the package. Overall, this is still the best version of "Wyatt Earp" on the market (tied with the identical HD-DVD release), but far from being the best Western.
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