The Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976.
Directed by Clint Eastwood.
Starring Clint Eastwood, Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney, and John Vernon.
SYNOPSIS:
Clint Eastwood’s 1976 classic The Outlaw Josey Wales makes its 4K Ultra HD debut. The film looks great, and you get a nice smattering of bonus features as well as a code for a digital copy.
Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood) loses his wife and son to a paramilitary group led by Captain Terrill (Bill McKinney) and aligned with the Union during the American Civil War. He seeks vengeance for their deaths by joining another paramilitary group, conducting raids until the war’s end.
When his fellow paramilitaries are murdered by Terrill’s Union forces after surrendering in 1865, Wales flees with another soldier (Sam Bottoms). His former commander, Captain Fletcher (John Vernon), is pressured into joining with Terrill in the search for Wales, who now has a price on his head.
During his travels, Wales joins up with an elderly Native American, Lone Watie (Chief Dan George), and later rescues a young Native American woman, Little Moonlight (Geraldine Keams). The group grows when he comes to the aid of Sarah Turner (Paula Trueman) and her granddaughter, Laura Lee (Sondra Locke), after their wagon train is attacked by Comancheros.
Along the way, Wales fends off bounty hunters, knowing that Fletcher, Terrill, and their men aren’t far behind. He also has to contend with the Comanche chief Ten Bears (Will Sampson), who is unhappy with the deaths of the Comancheros. The stage is thus set for a final showdown that will decide whether Wales can ride off into the sunset in the end.
The Outlaw Josey Wales was based on the book Gone to Texas by writer Forrest Carter, which was the pseudonym of former KKK leader Asa Earl Carter. I’ll admit the pro-Confederate aspects of the story don’t sit well with me, but Wales isn’t a racist character, and I realize that every war has its bad elements, even among those on the side that eventually prevails. So I can appreciate this story for what it is: the tale of a complicated anti-hero trying to survive the ever-shifting power dynamics after a major war.
This 4K Ultra HD edition of the film, which is also available in a very nice Steelbook, is the film’s debut on the format. It lives up to the quality expected from a 4K disc in every way, making this the definitive edition of the movie. You also get a code for a digital copy, but, keeping in line with how Warner Bros. handles a lot of archival releases these days, you don’t get a Blu-ray.
This is my first time with The Outlaw Josey Wales on home video. My understanding is that everything has been ported over from the 2011 Blu-ray, except the theatrical trailer, which is a bit of a head-scratcher.
However, the studio did commission a pair of new featurettes, An Outlaw and An Antihero and The Cinematography of an Outlaw: Crafting Josey Wales, that run about 15 minutes total. The former is more of the “film school on a disc” kind of content, with several college professors and writers discussing the film in the context of revisionist Western films that began to proliferate during the 1970s. The latter is an ode to cinematographer Bruce Surtees, who worked on many of Eastwood’s films and died in 2012.
The “film school on a disc” theme continues with an audio commentary by film critic Richard Schickel. It’s a carryover from an earlier edition, but, like many similar tracks, it’s worthwhile listening for its sheer volume of useful information. The other carryovers are Clint Eastwood’s West (29 minutes), Eastwood in Action (8 minutes), and Hell Hath No Fury: The Making of The Outlaw Josey Wales (29 minutes), all of which are worth your time.
The final bonus feature is Reinventing Westerns (17:36), which is old in the sense that it’s from the 2021 series Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy, but new in the sense that I don’t believe it has shown up on home video with this film yet. As you might imagine, a bunch of Eastwood’s collaborators and downright fans shower his legacy in the Western genre with praise.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
