Chisum (1970)

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General		Extras
Category	Western	Main Menu Audio Audio Commentary-Andrew V. McLagen ( Director) Featurette-John Wayne and "Chisum" Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1970
Running Time	106:48
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Andrew McLaglen
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	John Wayne Forrest Tucker Christopher George Ben Johnson Glenn Corbett Andrew Prine Brice Cabot Patric Knowles Richard Jaeckel Lynda Day George Geoffrey Deuel Pamela McMyler John Agar
Case	?
RPI	$29.95	Music	Andrew Fenady Dominic Frontiere

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Italian German Spanish Dutch Arabic Romanian	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Chisum is the story of the infamous Lincoln County War that took place in Lincoln County (surprise, surprise), New Mexico during the late 1870s. Two rival factions battling for power in the area drew the whole county into a 12 month-long bloody feud, where reputations were forged and lives were destroyed or changed forever.

    John Wayne plays the title character John Chisum, a cattle rancher who drove cattle from Texas to New Mexico and carved out a home for himself there. He owned huge amounts of land and cattle, and in fact it's said he may have owned more cattle than anyone else in the world at the time. Times are changing in the area though, with the Indians that used to be his main threat now living on reserves which Chisum supplies beef to, via the army. However, a new threat is appearing in the form of ambitious Irishman Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker), who's arrived in the area late, but wants to take his piece of Chisum's pie.

    Murphy starts buying up the local businesses, most importantly the local store which gives him a monopoly, allowing ridiculous prices to be charged for the basic needs of every citizen. He also stops the local Mexicans from watering on his land, and puts in place a dishonest sheriff to run the town. He then pays some Mexican bandits to steal horses from Chisum's range, killing some of his men in the process. In the ensuing chase and battle to retrieve the horses and punish the thieves, we meet William Bonney (Geoffrey Deuel) better known as "Billy the Kid", who is working for Chisum's friend; English ranch-owner Henry Tunstall (Patric Knowles).

    After all this, Chisum is tempted to take matters into his own hands, but sees that the West is changing and tries to do things through legitimate channels, along with Henry Tunstall (who is portrayed as a peace-loving, God-fearing man) and lawyer Alex McSween (Andrew Prine). They first open their own store and bank in town to break Murphy's monopoly, and later Henry heads out of town to bring in the local judge with the intentions of trying and convicting Murphy of his crimes. (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) However, Henry is shot and killed before he reaches his destination, which turns Bonney (who looked up to him as a father figure) into a vengeful killing machine intent on destroying all those responsible for his boss's death. From here on in the warfare is out in the open and it's a just a matter of time before it all escalates into a climactic confrontation between the main players.

    There are a number of other characters thrown into the mix, including Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett) who actually works alongside Bonney for a while, and Chisum's niece Sallie (Pamela McMyler) who creates a bit of a love triangle between these two men. This little sub-plot unfortunately gives us some of the most painfully acted moments in the film.

    Chisum is a little more than your usual Western in that the story is largely taken from history, and actually asks a few moral questions about what actions are acceptable for the sake of seeing injustice stopped or punished. I don't pretend to be an historian of the American frontier, but having read more than my fair share of Louis L'Amour books and also a little of the events portrayed in this movie I was surprised at how accurately the main facts were presented. Sure there were details that didn't fit, such as Henry Tunstall being so old (he was 24 at the time) (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) and Bonney not witnessing his death (it's reported that he actually saw his mentor shot, and in completely different circumstances to those shown in the film). Also for the sake of adding to Chisum's heroic character he is portrayed as capturing Tunstall's killers, when in fact it was Bonney and his posse of "Regulators" that did this. All in all though, the base facts that make up the foundation of the story are very accurate, according to the history books (a fact the Director regularly brings up during the commentary).

    Personally, I always find a film more interesting when I know that mostly the events actually took place (and no I'm not talking about Mel Gibson "historic" travesties here), but if that doesn't interest you then this is pretty much your standard John Wayne Western. The Duke plays his usual larger-than-life character, and is supported by incredible visuals in the surrounding scenery, dozens of stunt men putting their lives on the line, real-life stampedes, large gunfights, heroic one-liners, and of course a fist-fight or two. It's not as good as some of his classics, but there are certainly classic moments, and if you also have an interest in learning a little of this famous point in early American history then it's well worth a watch.

Video

    Besides a few niggling problems this is a lovely transfer that jumps out of the screen in all its Technicolor glory. This is the way such examples of sweeping epic cinematography should be viewed.

    This transfer is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    This is about as sharp and clear as anyone would have seen this movie since it ended its theatrical run. It has that almost 3-D feel that a lot of recent release movies exhibit on DVD. There are the occasional exceptions to this when we get a rather soft, grainy shot (such as 106:08), but these really are rare. There isn't any visible low-level noise in the darker scenes, with solid blacks. However in some of these dark scenes (such as 86:49) there is quite poor shadow detail.

    This film was shot in Technicolor, and exhibits the rich saturated colours that are associated with the format. The sky is bluer than blue, skin colours are ultra-tanned, and the colours in the vista shots make you want to move to Mexico. In all these saturated colours there were no signs of bleeding or chroma noise.

    There are no signs of MPEG compression and for such a sharp image I was pleasantly surprised to see no serious edge-enhancement and only the very occasional bit of aliasing (the saloon doors at 17:50 for example). The main complaint I have with the video is the almost constant presence of film artefacts in the form of little white specks. Good examples of this can be seen at 4:50 and 20:50. I found these to be very distracting on the big screen, however as a test I also watched a large portion of the film on a 76cm widescreen TV and found the problem to be barely noticeable. It certainly isn't too distracting on a smaller screen, but if you have a projector of some sorts this could be a problem issue.

    There are 8 subtitle streams on this DVD; English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Arabic and Romanian. I sampled the English stream and found it to be pretty close to spot on, with only the occasional word missed out.

    This is an RSDL disc, but I didn't notice the layer change which must have been well hidden.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Although not sporting the 4-channel remix of some of the other John Wayne Westerns released recently (such as The Comancheros), this track is more than adequate, and purists will be happy that we get the original mono track.

    There are 4 audio tracks on this disc; English Dolby Digital 1.0, French Dolby Digital 1.0, Italian Dolby Digital 1.0, and English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0, all recorded at 192 kbps. I listened to the English 1.0 and audio commentary tracks.

    Dialogue was clear and easy to understand, with no noticeable problems with lip sync. There did seem to be the occasional sync problem with guns firing though, but I guess when you've got 10 guys in one shot all firing at similar times it's hard to ADR it perfectly.

    Music by Andrew J. Fenady and Dominic Frontiere is varied. The score was mostly the usual dramatic orchestral one found in these types of films, however it did seem to be a bit too cheerful at times - not really reflecting what was developing on screen. There are also 2 songs included in the film; the opening credits' The Ballad of John Chisum and a similarly 1970s sounding romantic effort later in the proceedings. It's a shame when music that is very much specific to the production era is included in these sorts of films, because they sound dated and out of place in later years. Makes you wonder how some of our hip-hop/teeny-pop filled films will sound in 30 years time.

    Due to the nature of the mono track there is no surround nor subwoofer activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Menus are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and are 16x9 enhanced with looping music in the background.

Featurette - John Wayne and Chisum (8:55)

    The 1970s version of an EPK? Unlike today's though this is actually of some interest due to behind the scenes footage of the filming, giving us a small glimpse of the Duke at work. There's an overly dramatic narration over a lot of this featurette, but even some of that is of interest. I'd almost go so far as to say this extra is a little gem. Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, with surprisingly OK video quality.

Audio Commentary - Andrew V. McLagen ( Director)

    An audio commentary on a John Wayne film; this was a first for me! Despite only having the one participant, this is a commentary well worth listening to, as the director regales us with stories of the film, how it came to be, the script, the historical events portrayed, his own background (he directed 90-odd Gunsmoke episodes), working with the Duke, stuntmen, actors, film-making, and so on. There aren't many silent periods, and if you can get over his rather bored-sounding tone then there's a lot to be had here.

Theatrical Trailer (3:00)

    Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and 16x9 enhanced, with less than perfect video and audio. This trailer seems to spend almost as much time going on about Wayne as it does the movie (including footage of him at the Oscars with his True Grit Academy award). It spoils some of his best one-liners in the film, so I wouldn't recommend you watch it before the main feature.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Japanese subtitles.

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• Italian, German, Dutch, Arabic and Romanian subtitles.
• Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 track.

    There's no significant differences between the two versions. Unless the Japanese subtitles are something you need I'd go with the local disc.

    John Wayne pulls off one of his usual charismatic, charming performances in a film that has all the standard ingredients of the Western genre, as well as some historical interest. Fans of Wayne or just Westerns in general can't fail to be pleased.

    The video transfer has been done with due care and concern. With the exception of a few niggles you couldn't really ask for more.

    The audio, presented as it was originally, does the job with no problems.

    A worthwhile commentary and an interesting featurette make this a better packed disc than the other recent John Wayne DVD releases.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall