'The Cowboys' - High-Def Digest Review

[jed]

Kenneth's review of 'The Cowboys' on Blu-ray is up. He says this "intriguing" western from the twilight of John Wayne's career is one of the better catalog titles he's reviewed, boasting another of Warner's solid remasters, and a nice (if somewhat light set of supplements. The only real knock on this one is pretty unavoidable -- while Warner has upgraded the film's original track to 5.1 surround, there's just so much you can do with a mono source.

Full review here:
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/cowboys.html

[scubasteve]

The reviewer states that he "hard time stomaching certain elements of the film in light of more recent (and well-publicized) incidents of teen gun-violence. It was strange seeing a group of bullet-slinging teens mercilessly work their way up through a hierarchy of villains -- sometimes the boys would even lure gunmen into the woods where they could get the drop on them. I'm certainly not going to suggest the filmmakers were glorifying kids taking violence into their own hands. But while fully realizing that this is a film from a different era, it was tough to sit through the last third without seeing it in a modern context."

I guess it all matters who the good guys are. I don't think "The Cowboys" was promoting the idea of school shootings or gang drive-bys..to interpret it this way is quite a stretch. In terms of teens with guns, who do you think served in Europe and the Pacific in WWII or Vietnam or even today in Iraq? It's primarily teens with guns.

[Ken Brown]

Originally Posted by scubasteve

The reviewer states that he "hard time stomaching certain elements of the film in light of more recent (and well-publicized) incidents of teen gun-violence. It was strange seeing a group of bullet-slinging teens mercilessly work their way up through a hierarchy of villains -- sometimes the boys would even lure gunmen into the woods where they could get the drop on them. I'm certainly not going to suggest the filmmakers were glorifying kids taking violence into their own hands. But while fully realizing that this is a film from a different era, it was tough to sit through the last third without seeing it in a modern context."

I guess it all matters who the good guys are. I don't think "The Cowboys" was promoting the idea of school shootings or gang drive-bys..to interpret it this way is quite a stretch. In terms of teens with guns, who do you think served in Europe and the Pacific in WWII or Vietnam or even today in Iraq? It's primarily teens with guns.

I did mention in the review that I didn't think the filmmakers were promoting the idea of youth violence.

I just wanted to mention it was strange seeing guns in young hands in a modern context (a context that makes the experience of the movie different than it would've been when the movie was first released). I wasn't saying young people never had guns in the past or that the actions in 'The Cowboys' was unjustified.

If this movie were released today, it would raise sensitivity eyebrows. Should those eyebrows be raised? Absolutely - cinema should be challenging.

Sorry for the miscommunication. Thanks for your post and thoughts!

[mrbmarco]

Started to watch this last night and heard full stereo separation from the front speakers----
The BD also has a stereo overture (---one of the last---)
So, was the movie released in stereo or mono???

[Cochise]

Originally Posted by mrbmarco

Started to watch this last night and heard full stereo separation from the front speakers----
The BD also has a stereo overture (---one of the last---)
So, was the movie released in stereo or mono???

Welcome to the forum.

But I have to point out that it's often helpful to actually read the reviews here.

Originally Posted by High-Def Digest.com

Featuring a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track (640 kbps), this Blu-ray mix sounds nearly identical to the Dolby Digital-Plus track (1.5 Mbps) on the HD DVD edition. As was the case with Warner's concurrent release of Wayne's 'Rio Bravo,' the audio on both mixes has been remastered from the theatrical mono mix.

[SPick17]

I wasn't all that impressed with this release PQ wise. Some of the first Blu's i watched were The Searchers and 2001, which were fantastic and even managed to convert some of my friends and family to the format. However, the quality of these discs do raise the bar very high for other older films to compete with. Maybe i'm asking too much, but i'm always looking for that 'wow' factor every time i spin a Blu Ray.